Breaking The Curse

With Honor Among Thieves hitting theaters, Hasbro tries to overcome 50 years of Dungeons & Dragons business disasters without enraging its fan base

- Felix Gillette and Thomas Buckley

Past the Mr. Potato Head statuary in the parking lot, past the phalanx of vintage GI Joe soldiers lining the hallway, past the old-timey Monopoly board hanging on the wall, Chris Cocks stops in front of a whiteboard. “Let me just erase these corporate secrets,” says the chief executive officer of Hasbro Inc. Two reporters visiting the toymaker’s headquarters in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, corkscrew their necks trying to decode what appears to be company financials. Then Cocks raises his hand and wipes it all away.

If only he could make some recent entries in Hasbro’s ledger disappear as easily. In January, following a bout of weak holiday sales, the company announced it would cut 15% of its workforce. By March, its shares were down by more than 40% from the year before. It has suggested to anxious investors that brighter days are coming as it doubles down on one of the most seemingly valuable franchises in gaming, Dungeons & Dragons, the classic tabletop role-playing game, or RPG. “It’s a good time to be a fan,” Cocks says.

On March 31, Hasbro will kick off a D&D blitz, starting with the release of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. It’s a big-budget, CGI-laden spectacle co-produced by Paramount Pictures and Hasbro’s in-house EOne Studio, starring Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez as a couple of wisecracking, world-saving thieves. In August, Baldur’s Gate III, the latest sequel in a popular series of video games based on D&D, is set to go on sale, followed by the release of a live-action D&D TV series being developed for Paramount+. And sometime next year, Hasbro is expected to unveil One D&D, the next iteration of the tabletop game.