Having developed what we can only assume is a taste for playing charmingly doomed video game heroes—what with his upcoming Free Guy, and now this—Ryan Reynolds is reportedly in talks to star in a live-action movie version of classic ’80s arcade cabinet Dragon’s Lair.
You remember Dragon’s Lair, right? It (and its sequel) were always some of the most eye-catching titles in any given arcade, on account of the incredibly stylish, Don Bluth-produced animation they sported—even if the actual games mostly amounted to watching a cartoon, hitting a button, and then inevitably seeing poor Dirk The Daring get ripped limb from limb. (Or burned to death. Or shot with arrows. Or melted. He died a lot, is the point.) Although there was a short-lived Dragon’s Lair cartoon (unaffiliated with Bluth) back in 1984, plans to make a film out of the franchise have been poking around in one form or another for the better part of 30 years. (We wrote about Bluth’s own attempts to crowdfund an animated version just a few years back.)
Now, though, the big guns are involved, with—per THR—Reynolds potentially teaming up with Netflix for a live-action adaptation of the series. And while losing Bluth’s animation would seemingly defeat the entire purpose of the endeavor, we do have to admit that Reynolds would make a pretty good Dirk, bumbling his way through ludicrously dangerous situations in pursuit of his lady love.
Per the THR piece, Netflix just picked up the rights to the project after what was apparently a year of hard negotiations. Reynolds is still only in talks to come aboard the project as a producer and star, but, again, given his taste for inserting himself into video game tropes of late, it seems like it’d be a (very dangerous) slam dunk.