Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez are shocked that 'Dungeons & Dragons' inspired Satanic Panic: 'That's wild'

Dungeons and... devils? As a wave of Satanic Panic crested through American conservative circles in the 1980s, the tabletop fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons became one of the pieces of pop culture viewed as a gateway to hell due to its ability to immerse kids in an elaborate fantasy world populated by gods and monsters. It's a strange moment in D&D history that the current generation of young players most likely first learned about via the most recent season of Stranger Things.

But don't take the Duffer Brothers's word for it: Jeremy Latcham — one of the producers behind the new Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves — lived through the country's Satanic Panic period and remembers that Christian-led crusade against the game being as strange as you might imagine.

"I grew up in the '80s in Oklahoma," Latcham tells Yahoo Entertainment. "I remember that the only thing I knew about D&D was going to church on Sunday and we'd have a whole Satanic Panic day! It was all about Ozzy Osbourne eating the head off of a bat, and D&D and some heavy metal music. It was like, 'That's not allowed.' We had to watch a video in our youth group!"

Flash-forward forty years and Satanic Panic is dead and buried, while Dungeons & Dragons is still going strong, not just as a game, but also as a trans-media franchise encompassing video games, books and this already-acclaimed new film. "There's a great irony to me now making a D&D movie so many years later," Latcham acknowledges with a laugh.

In the intervening decades, Latcham left Oklahoma for Hollywood, where he worked at Marvel Studios for years overseeing movies like Iron Man 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy. In 2017, he launched his own production company, Latcham Pictures, now part of eOne — the film and TV studio owned by toy giant Hasbro, which counts D&D under its huge umbrella of tabletop franchises. And that position has allowed him to see firsthand what his former church leaders got so wrong about the game.

"I don't think people realized how community-building the game is, and how it brings people together and brings out the best of them," he explains now. "It's quite the opposite of what the old adage about it was. It's pretty wild how vastly different it is."

Honor Among Thieves co-director, Jonathan Goldstein — who helmed the movie with his regular collaborator, John Frances Daley — echoes those sentiments as the proud father of a D&D player. "My 11-year-old son and every boy in his fifth grade class joined a D&D group," he says. "I didn't force them to do it: They did it on their own. It's so great to see them playing it, because it's not on a screen. They're using their imaginations."

Of course, sometimes those imaginations can get carried away. "For 11-year-old boys, it usually turns very violent, very fast," Goldstein says, laughing. "They killed a princess the other day that the Dungeon Master was really trying to stop them from killing! He was like, 'It's not in your interest to kill her,' but they said, 'Nope, we're killing the princess.'"

Honor Among Thieves stars Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez missed D&D's Satanic Panic period and express surprise that the game could ever have been considered dangerous. "I remember rap music being feared," Pine says, digging around in his childhood memories. "Metallica was feared, death metal was feared. But I don't remember Dungeons & Dragons ever being on the most wanted list of cultural artifacts. That's wild."

"What's surprising to me about that is D&D is super-imaginative," Pine continues. "It's really collaborative and positive. There's always a lot of laughing when you play."

On the other hand, Rodriguez's own religious background helps her understand why D&D was targeted at the time. "I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness," the Fast and Furious star says. "So when it comes to suppression of some sort, I get it. But that's weird that was a thing [with D&D]. Maybe people confused it with an Ouija board." Now there's a crossover we'd like to see on the big screen.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is playing in theaters now.