Quote Originally Posted by Palanan View Post

As for its tone, it's not what I had in mind when I started this thread, and I wouldn't really call it "lighthearted fantasy" overall. From the various suggestions I've received in this thread, it seems clear that there's hardly anything out there with the tone I had in mind, without quickly slipping into comic absurdity on the one hand or earnest goofiness on the other. Not sure why that is.
Probably because, in films, fantasy needs to be paired with a strong genre. The audience necessary for movies to be successful and warranted is many times the equivalent for published work. Even today, in the post-LOTR films era when fantasy arguably became a mainstream genre, it is still fighting an uphill battle to prove itself and to attract movie audiences.

One consequence of how niche fantasy as a genre is in movies is that it will usually need to be paired with another genre to attract a sufficient audience. The same thing with sci-fi. All fantasy successes have done that, the latest of which, Game of Thrones, is as much fantasy as it is a political thriller and a horror series. The Witcher is more light-hearted, but it would still be too much of a genre piece (a fantasy hardboiled thriller) to satisfy your requirements.

And just as "light-hearted vanilla" as a genre by itself is not attractive to movie audiences*, that matched with fantasy is also not attractive to audiences. Therefore it's only rarely made.


*You mentioned explicitly that you exclude products with goofiness and comedy, so something like the Jumanji reboots would not count.