Netflix is building a live-action Dungeons and Dragons series in Ravenloft, the gothic horror setting where the mists lock you in and the local count is already dead. Writer and executive producer John August is developing it with Hasbro Entertainment. Alfonso Cuaron is an executive producer through Esperanto Filmoj, with Richard Schwartz and Gaby Rodriguez. Gabriel Marano is on it for Hasbro.
The logline is a Strahd origin story. Strahd von Zarovich starts as a tragic antihero and ends as the vampire Darklord. Power, love, obsession, loss, then the undead version of all four. The pitch calls it a prestige fantasy drama that mixes adventure, supernatural intrigue, dark magic, and tragic romance. No cast. No episode order. No date. Development only.
This replaces the other D&D show Netflix had on the board. The Forgotten Realms, with Drew Crevello writing and Shawn Levy producing, is no longer moving at the streamer. That one was the sword-and-tavern lane Honor Among Thieves already used. Ravenloft is the castle and the fog.
Hasbro has wanted a live-action series for years. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves arrived in 2023 and did not spin into a film slate. A Paramount+ project from Rawson Marshall Thurber and Crevello got a straight-to-series order that same year and never showed up. Netflix is the third swing that helps Dungeons And Dragons with popularity. Stranger Things already taught the company that kids with dice and a Demogorgon drawing can move subscribers. This is the licensed version of that mood, aimed at adults who want Barovia instead of Hawkins.
Ravenloft started as a 1983 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons module by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman. They ran it every Halloween for five years before TSR printed it. Strahd sits in Castle Ravenloft over Barovia and hunts a woman who looks like the one he already ruined. The adventure put the monster in charge. Later books turned that castle into a whole prison plane, the Domains of Dread, each with its own Darklord. Official novels, rulebooks, video games, and a stack of fan tables followed. Curse of Strahd in 2016 became the fifth-edition campaign a lot of tables still run. Wizards put Ravenloft: The Horrors Within out in 2026 with new horror subclasses and another pass at Strahd’s numbers. Dark Horse has a comic. Renegade is reprinting the Castle Ravenloft board game for 2027. The TV take is arriving in a year the brand is already selling fog.
August has written or co-written five Tim Burton movies: Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Dark Shadows, and Frankenweenie. Dark Shadows is the closest cousin, another handsome corpse with a doomed romance. He also wrote Go, Charlie’s Angels, and Aladdin. Cuaron directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, then Roma for Netflix in 2018. Roma got Netflix its first Best Picture nomination. Cuaron won Director and Cinematography. He is back at the streamer eight years later, also developing Ascension there, after Disclaimer on Apple.
Cuaron producing is not Cuaron directing. The announcement does not give him an episode. August is the writer on the page. That still puts a gothic screenwriter and a prestige-film name on a Hasbro vampire before anyone has to argue about who plays Ireena.
Strahd is basically D&D’s version of Dracula. He is a warlord who took a land, wanted his brother’s lover, made a deal, and became the thing in the castle. Barovia is the cage. The Dark Powers keep him there. Players who have run Curse of Strahd already know the dinner invitation, the organ, and the fact that he can show up in the inn if the dungeon master is feeling mean. A series that starts before the fangs is a different show than a party crawling Castle Ravenloft for 10 hours. Origins mean Tatyana, Sergei, the conquest, and the night he stops being a man. How much of the Domains of Dread sit around that, Netflix has not said.
Would you watch a Strahd origin series, or do you only care if the party gets to storm the castle? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.