In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a charming bard-turned-thief leads a ragtag band of misfits on an epic quest to rob one of the richest men in the land and save his daughter. To succeed in their mission, the adventurers must find an ancient relic lost to the world many years ago. However, their plan becomes even more dangerous as an ancient sect of powerful magic users becomes their enemies, and they discover the stakes are higher than they could have ever imagined.

John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein directed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and co-wrote the film with Michael Gilio. Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Justice Smith, Sophia Lillis, Hugh Grant, Chloe Coleman, and Daisy Head star in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Jeremy Latcham serves as producer, reuniting with Daley and Goldstein after producing their MCU movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Screen Rant spoke with Jeremy Latcham about working on Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves in support of the digital release. He discussed working with Wizards of the Coast and reveals two D&D creatures they wanted to include but had to cut for budgetary reasons. Latcham also shared the tricky nature of deleted scenes while reminiscing about his time on Iron Man by explaining a deleted scene that will never see the light of day.

Jeremy Latcham on Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Regé-Jean Page, Michelle Rodriguez, Chris Pine, Sophia Lillis, and Justice Smith in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Screen Rant: I love this movie so much! I'm a huge D&D fan and this completely captures exactly what made me fall in love with it. So I love it!

Jeremy Latcham: That's awesome. That makes me so happy to hear. That is the only goal when you're adapting something, is to figure out what makes it tick. Figure out what makes people who are hardcore, love it, figure out what makes the casual player love it, and then try to capture that spirit and bring it to the film, that is the goal. That is the ultimate goal. So to hear that we did it for you. That makes me happy. So thank you for sharing that. That's awesome.

One of the things I love is that the found family dynamic is built on a platonic relationship because I feel like we don't see that enough in movies or TV. Why did that make sense as the key relationship, and what was the most fun part of that dynamic between Michelle and Chris?

Jeremy Latcham: It was really early on. It was something that John and Jonathan really gravitated towards early in the scripting process. They were like, "There is no chemistry. They are just friends. It is purely a platonic relationship. We don't see enough of those in movies." As you think back on it, it's really true. You never really see people just be friends that are of opposite sex. It's always got to have a do they don't pay, or will they won't they underscoring it, and it kind of changes all of the dynamics. And so to have a relationship between these two people, where they're both hurt, they've both been in long relationships, his wife obviously passed away, her husband obviously divorced her for a taller, even huskier barbarian. It's heartbreaking. And so it was really fun watching that friendship blossom.

And I think Chris and Michelle are really, really different people. They don't really make any sense together, but because of that they really do. They really click and they bring such different life views the world. And I don't know, you can't help but just fall in love with the two of them together on screen. It's just a great relationship. They're really cool together. I think it's a lot of it's the writing. John Jonathan's writing is so strong, they're incredible writers, a lot of it's the direction and a lot of it's the cast. They found the right people.

And it's interesting when you look back at the way a movie comes together, because the casting process is so weird on a movie. You write it. You start putting it together and it's completely different when it's the so and so and so and so version of the film, and then you look back and you go, "Oh my god, I'm so happy to so and so and so version of the film never came to fruition because I don't think it would be what this is." And you end up finding somehow, if the movie Gods smile on you, you end up finding the right cast. I've been fortunate that that's happened to me a bunch over the years where you just find the right cast. And I think here like boy, did we find the right cast. They're just great together.

That is one of my favorite relationships I've seen in a movie in a really long time. How closely did you guys work with Wizards of the Coast, especially when incorporating details from The Forgotten Realms and visual elements of the D&D world into this movie?

Jeremy Latcham: We worked really closely with Wizards of the Coast. Jeremy Jarvis and Nathan Stewart were our two main conduits into Wizards' world and they were great, great stewards of the brand. And they were great collaborators. It was a tricky line because the thing is, we had to make a movie that was going to work for fans, but at the end of the day, we had to make a movie that was gonna work for everybody. That literally could work for someone who's never played the game, who's never seen the game. That's where I come in and be helpful because I had never played the game. I've never really been involved in the game.

And that is not an unusual position for me. I'd never read an Ironman comic before I worked on Ironman one. I'd never read a Guardians comic before or worked on Guardians. I had never really read Spider-Man much before I worked on Spider-Man, which is like sacrilege because he's frickin Spider-Man and by then I'd been at Marvel for 14 years by the time I made that film. It's kind of crazy, but I always had this notion of I come to it and I bring the every person perspective. I never want to be too close that I'm a fanboy, who loses perspective and goes, "I knew that it has to be this way." And you go, "Well, I don't understand that. I'm just a mom in Omaha this isn't for me. What's going on in this movie? I have no idea what's happening."

It's really important that we make it for everybody and make it so that you could walk in off the street know nothing and walk out going, "Oh, that's really cool. Should I play D&D? I didn't think that was like something I was ever going to do. But I think that might play D&D." That collaboration with Wizards was incredibly important because it made it all true and it made it all right. And it made it all accurate. They also just had great ideas. It was really important to them that the city feel lived in. That everything feels like it'd been there for a long time. That it felt like you could feel a civilization that exists underneath it. So when you look at some of the wide shots of Neverwinter you can see different eras when stuff with built and it really captured the history of the universe.

They were great to work with. They sometimes gave us a hard time about making the dragon too chunky. Which we just kind of said trust us, it's gonna be fun. The fatter he is the better he is I promise. You're gonna like it. It's not fat shaming. No one is out to fat shame Themberchaud. He is a ferocious guy who'd like to eat a lot of people and other things, too. He eats whatever comes his way, but it was a fun line to walk there. We're not making fun of Themberchaud. We're scared of him. He's not the object of derision in any capacity, which was kind of fun.

The Red Wizards of Thay in Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves.

You introduce all these characters and storylines with the Red Wizards of Thay, the Emerald Enclave, and the Harbors. Are there any that you would have wanted to maybe touch on more in the movie or that you'd want to explore more?

Jeremy Latcham: There were some creatures that we wanted to put in the film and that we ultimately ran out of money for, because they were what ended up just being kind of expensive gags and also kind of slow down the pace of the movie. When they steal the horses at the very beginning of the movie after they've escaped from Icewind Dale, and they go to those two yurts. We had this bit where we wanted to build a practical Tortle, which is this humanoid turtle race. And we wanted the Tortle to slowly chase them to try to get his horse back. And it was going to be this very slow moving chase scene with a Tortle just trying to get by. And it was like, Guys, this is going to be so expensive and at this point in the movie we jus want to get the movie going." I think everyone was right to tell us like we can't do the Tortle.

And then we wanted to have a Grippli in the film when Xenk goes to the Dragonborn and the Dragonborn says, "Genkli". And he said, "Genkli to you good sir." We wanted that to be a Grippli boy. And then we got the price from Legacy for what it was going to cost to build another fully realized, because we weren't going to do with CG. There was no talk of doing this Grippli CG. If we're doing a Grippli, it's gonna be a puppet, could be a guy, could be puppeteered. Hands being moved by rods and all this stuff. And they're like, "Oh, how much is this joke gonna cost? We can't afford another really expensive joke." Because we already had the really expensive joke with the Intellect Devourers. Where we spent so much money, designing and modeling and building intellect of hours to come scurrying through.

And we were like, "Well, that's a really expensive joke. How many expensive jokes do we get in the movie?" Can we just have jokes that aren't a billion dollars? So the decision was made ultimately take the Dragonborn and repurpose Nirixeus into a beggar and use the same prosthetic. Ultimately, I think that's what's so fun about John and Jonathan is they have a million ideas that you can just keep going forever, but at some point you just can't afford to.

The Tortle sounds hilarious.

Jeremy Latcham: Doesn't that sound great? It's just made me laugh so hard just the realities of this slow moving action. So stupid.

I love these behind-the-scenes moments that we get to hear about. Is there anything with the Home Entertainment release or special features that you're really excited for fans to see to give them a little more insight?

Jeremy Latcham: They did a great job with all this stuff. I think the "From Dice to Dragons: Honoring the Lore" piece, which is the behind the scenes piece is a really good representation of the film and the way it was made. I think they did a really good job putting that one together. I think that there is also a couple of things in the deleted scenes that'll be fun and nice surprises. I think people understand why we deleted them. I don't think there'll be a big clamoring of, "You messed up! You should have left that in." That's kind of how I always feel. Deleted scenes are funny to me because I've yet to see one where I'm like, "Why isn't that in the movie?" I usually am like, "Oh, yeah. You should have cut that. That's probably a good call."

It was always kind of hard when the studio comes to you and the home video people are like, "Hey, listen, we want all the deleted scenes." And I'm like, "Oh, no, no, if we put those out. You'll know we don't know what we're doing." I's actually funny, because yesterday was the 15 year anniversary of Iron Man and there are still three or four deleted scenes from that movie that I don't think will ever be released because they were so bad. I remember Kevin saying to me in like a 2012 we've got a box set and I was like, "Should we put the Abu doing laundry deleted scenes out?" And Kevin was like, "No. We can never put out Abu doing laundry. People will know we don't know what we're doing. It'll be embarrassing if they see these scenes." But there was a whole runner in Iron Man where Tony Stark was doing laundry and I don't think they've ever come out.

Someone should look into it, but I don't think they've ever been seen. Tony is doing laundry for the captors, but he's really breaking the washing machine and stealing parts from it to build the Mark 1 suit. It's so absurd. It's It's wild. So sometimes deleted scenes are tricky because you're like, "I don't want them to know that we don't know what we're doing." But it happens. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you put a delete scene together and ou're like, "Oh yeah, we should have had that in the movie." I don't think we have any that are total misses like that on this movie where we're like, "That should have been in the film." I don't think they'll see anything and be like, "Oh, they should left that." I'm curious what people think about them.

About Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Simon, Edgin, Doric, and Holga looking at Xenk in Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a long-lost relic, but their charming adventure goes dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.

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