Deadline.com reported Tuesday that Warner Bros. was developing a movie based on the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game. Thursday though, the website quoted a Hasbro spokesman as denying that Warner Bros. had any rights to do so.
The Warner Bros. project is apparently well underway and being treated as a major priority by the studio. A script is already complete. Titled Chainmail, it is somehow derived from the miniatures war game of the same name, which was a precursor to D&D.
Hasbro though, says that it retains all intellectual property rights to Dungeons & Dragons, and is itself partnering with Universal to produce a film based on the game. Hasbro came in to possession of D&D when it purchased Wizards of the Coast, which had purchased the original D&D publisher, TSR.
The Hasbro/Universal movie is to be directed by Chris Morgan, previously associated with The Fast and the Furious.
Finally, Deadline.com cites an “insider” on the Warner Bros. project as saying that this conflict has been addressed and settled before. The source explained that an earlier binding arbitration conferred the necessary rights to Courtney Solomon, who produced a D&D movie in 2000 [yech!] and is associated now with Warner Bros.