According to Variety, 'Joel Silver's Silver Pictures will produce Dungeons & Dragons: The Sequel for an early 2004 release.'  The first Dungeons & Dragons film, produced by New Line in 2000, was, in spite of a cast that included Jeremy Irons and Thora Birch, such a horrible bomb that the first thing that Silver should do is to lose the 'sequel'---try to keep the D&D brand, but sever all connections to the New Line film. Filmed on the cheap in Rumania, the first D&D film was so dingy and colorless that it made the worst of its contemporaries such as the murky and muddled Battlefield Earth look like a Target commercial.

The fantasy revival led by Lord of the Rings undoubtedly has something to do with the decision to make another D&D feature film.  While the D&D brand remains the 'gold standard' in the world of role-playing games, the next live action D&D film had better please the game's core audience, and films like the LOTR trilogy have raised the bar considerably since the first D&D film was released in 2000.  More competition arrives this summer in the form of a computer animated interactive D&D feature that is by its very nature, much closer to the actual experience of playing the game (see 'A D&D Interactive DVD').