DnD movie crew smashed up Neverwinter with a Mini Cooper

The special effects team for the DnD movie, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, got creative with a Mini Cooper when filming the finale.

DnD movie Mini Cooper - Paramount image of Michelle Rodriguez as Holga the Barbarian in D&D: Honor Among Thieves

It turns out the final scenes of the DnD movie wouldn’t have been possible without a hidden Mini Cooper. In the recently published book ‘The Art and Making of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’, special effects supervisor Sam Conway explains the secret starring role of the compact car.

The Dungeons and Dragons movie is a fantasy romp that aims to recreate the feeling of playing Dungeons and Dragons. (Our DnD movie review shows it did a pretty good job, though we did spot some DnD movie mistakes.) This means its grand finale had to include some typical tabletop RPG combat – cue plenty of property destruction. Conway says he needed something that could adequately smash up the set.

“So, what is smashing the market store? I’ve got a Mini Cooper – a little Mini Cooper – and I race it around the carport”, he says. “And I thought ‘That’s great! I’ll get that’.” “So, I used the Mini Cooper”, Conway continues. “We stripped it down and put a cage around it, and all that sort of thing, and painted it blue, and that was what was smashing through the stores.” Picture The Italian Job, only set in the DnD city of Neverwinter.

DnD movie mini cooper - product photo of the book 'The Art and Making of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves'

‘The Art of Making Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ was released on April 4. Written by Eleni Roussos, it features behind-the-scenes images, interviews, and trivia that show how the latest D&D movie got made.

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