Hugh Grant Will Play Villain in Upcoming D&D Film, Joining Sophia Lillis

The cast of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie is continuing to fill out nicely, full of eclectic picks that now includes both Hugh Grant and Sophia Lillis, according to Deadline. Of special interest is Grant, coming off a huge year of roles, as he will reportedly be playing the main antagonist of this version of D&D. Which is to say: We guess the rule of “English bad guy” is still in full effect, 20 years after Jeremy Irons played a villainous wizard in the 2000 version of D&D. Who wants to bet that Grant is also playing some kind of sorcerer?

It star Sophia Lillis, meanwhile, is coming off the Amazon film Uncle Frank and Netflix series I Am Not Okay With This, and will be joining a star-studded cast that already includes Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith and Bridgerton’s Rege-Jean Page. The film is being written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley.

As for the overarching structure of this version of D&D, we’re completely in the dark, but the success of the more recent Jumanji adaptations makes us wonder if D&D isn’t ripe for some of the same meta-examination. Perhaps this time around we’ll be following a group of people playing D&D, rather than a story set within the fictional world of the tabletop roleplaying game first published in 1974. In the decades since, more than 40 million players have participated in D&D at one point or another.

At the very least, Hugh Grant is an interesting casting, coming off one of the high points of his career in 2020. The resurgent Grant has been on a roll ever since playing a villain in Paddington 2, and received Golden Globe and SAG nominations in 2020 for HBO’s The Undoing. Before that, he was starring in Amazon’s A Very English Scandal. One has to think that playing some other iteration on “evil wizard” would be a walk in the park for him, so here’s hoping there’s another twist to this particular casting.

We’ll bring you more info on the next cinematic version of D&D as it arrives.