If it seems like there’s glimmers of the MCU in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, that might not be an accident. In fact, not only have directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (who co-wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming) previously name-dropped the MCU when talking about the tone, but they’ve got one of the architects behind Phase 1 among their producers.
That’s Jeremy Latcham, who was an associate producer on Iron Man, co-producer on Iron Man 2, and executive producer for The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Spider-Man: Homecoming. Latcham says his first experience with Goldstein and Daley came from reading an unproduced script of theirs called Bus Driver, which was “one of the best scripts” he’d ever read, and then brought them onto Homecoming.
“They wrote this first draft of Spider-Man that was unbelievable and really captured everything that I wanted out of that movie,” he tells IGN in a recent interview. “The John Hughes tone, the friendships, the camaraderie, the regular nerdy high school kid element of it.”
Latcham left Marvel in 2017, however, as he “wanted to make sure that my career was not just making just Marvel films.” He just so happened to reconnect with Goldstein later in the most Los Angeles of ways: running into him at a grocery store in Hollywood, after Paramount and Hasbro had already brought the writing/directing duo on for D&D.
“He found out that I’d read the script and the guys immediately were like, ‘Is there any chance you would do this?,’ ” Latcham says. “And I was like, ‘I would literally do anything with you guys. I’m such a huge fan.’ “
When Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves comes out this Friday, Paramount will no doubt be eyeing D&D as a potential film franchise if it manages to succeed at the box office. Latcham says “we’re all dreaming that we get lucky enough to make a sequel,” but if he learned one thing from his work on the MCU, it’s to not get too distracted on future films.
He recounts a story from back when he was working on the first Iron Man, when Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige taught him his best franchise lesson: “Don’t save any ideas.”
“I remember I came to Kevin at one point and I was like, ‘Kevin, I have an idea for Iron Man 2.’ And he goes, ‘Great, put it in Iron Man 1,’ ” he says.
Latcham recalls pushing back against Feige, insisting that it was an idea for the sequel. But Feige pushed right back.
“No, there’s no Iron Man 2, Jeremy, there’s Iron Man 1,” Latcham remembers Feige saying. “If you have a great idea, put it in. We need this movie to be as great as we can make it so that we get a chance to make Iron-Man 2.”
“I said, ‘But what if we run out of good ideas?’ ” Latcham continues. “And [Feige] goes, ‘Well, then we shouldn’t be in the business.’ “
Latcham, who was at Marvel for 14 years and calls Feige a “mentor” and “the smartest producer ever to work in Hollywood,” took the advice to heart. In fact, it’s advice that he thinks Hollywood should take more widely.
“You can read these announcements in Variety and Hollywood Reporter over the years and they’re like, ‘we’re going to build a universe around this and we are going to hire all these expensive, big-name, crazy famous people and they’re going to build a universe,’ ” he says. “And most of those things don’t come to pass, because the goal for audiences is not like, ‘I want to invest in your universe.’ The goal is ‘I want to invest in a movie and have a great time, and I’ll let you know if I want to come back for it.’ “
Plus, he notes that just trying to “capture the attention of the world” with one movie is a full-time job. And while Dungeons & Dragons has been around as a property for decades, this current iteration of it (not counting the much-maligned 2000 feature film, of course) is a fresh face on the big screen.
“If you look at the competition, there’s a Shazam 2, a John Wick 4, Marvel 39,” he says. “Every franchise out there is pretty… the word I like to use is ‘mature.’ “
“They’ve been around for a minute and people know what to expect and they know what they want, and they sign up to see it over and over again,” he goes on. “And to be the new kid on the block is a daunting experience. And we have 50 years of fandom and 50 years of people loving the game, but there’s real skepticism. And so I think for me and the guys right now, our full-time job is to tell everyone how much we love this movie and get it out there.”
For more on Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, check out our 7/10 review and an interview with the cast and directors.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
