Dragon's Lair was a technological marvel when it was released in 1983. Instead of using conventional graphics of the day, which were not great, it featured real animation by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth, enabled by beefy LaserDisc storage. It wasn't a particularly good game—it sucked, frankly—but those stunning visuals turned it into a five-star quarters-eater, and inspired home versions on a variety of platforms. The original is on Steam, and GOG picked up the Dragon's Lair Trilogy in 2018.
In 2015, Bluth and Gary Goldman launched a $550,000 Kickstarter project to help fund the creation of Dragons' Lair: The Movie. It tanked, so they cancelled and went to Indiegogo looking for $250,000—just slightly over what was pledged on Kickstarter—and this time, they were successful, achieving their goal in just a couple of weeks and ultimately pulling in more than $730,000.
And now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, the project has been picked up by Netflix, with none other than Ryan Reynolds in talks to star as Dragon's Lair hero Dirk the Daring. Bluth, Goldman, and John Pomeroy, another animator who left Disney to work with Bluth, are producing. Netflix confirmed the report on Twitter:
🐉⚔️HEAR YE, HEAR YE⚔️🐉Netflix is developing a live action feature adaptation of the legendary 80s arcade game Dragon's Lair. @VancityReynolds is in talks to play noble Knight Dirk the Daring, on his quest to rescue Princess Daphne from the titular dragon.March 27, 2020
Dragon's Lair isn't big on plot: Princess Daphne has been kidnapped by the dragon Singe and is being held in the fortress of the evil wizard Mordoc, and Dirk the Daring, a bold, vaguely dim-witted knight, crashes the castle to rescue her. The game itself doesn't provide any greater depth, because it's basically a series of rapid-fire quicktime events. That means the writers have the freedom to run with pretty much whatever they want, but whether that's actually a good thing, we'll have to wait and see.
Hopefully it will be better than Reynolds' last collaboration with Netflix, the Michael Bay-directed cinematic fiasco 6 Underground—honestly, I can't imagine it being any worse.
