Board Games: the movies

So yeah we've already LOL'd re: Battleship but oh the forthcoming shitstorm:

Universal Pictures has quietly dropped out of Clue, one of the seven Hasbro games properties the studio contracted to make into movies in a ground-breaking six-year exclusive deal signed in 2008. Clue becomes the third project out of seven to be dropped by Universal (Monopoly and Magic, The Gathering were also kicked to the curb), but none of those projects are dead...

They've just hired Flash Gordon scribes Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama to write the Clue script. The writers will draft a take that Verbinski and his fellow producers came up with that retains the murder mystery spirit of the board game, but broadens the setting to a global stage...

Is all this a clue that Universal no longer wants to roll the dice on board game movies? Insiders say no. Rather, they tell me that Universal and Hasbro gradually narrowed their focus to the four films that most made sense for the studio: Battleship, the Peter Berg-directed summer 2012 action movie that stars Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson, with Universal just releasing its first trailer; Stretch Armstrong, which has Rob Letterman directing and Twilight Saga's Taylor Lautner attached to play the rubbery title character; Candyland, which is being written by Kung Fu Panda 2 cowriter Jonathan Aibel; and Ouija, which has McG attached to direct and Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form producing with Ian Bryce and Hasbro's Goldner and Schneir.

The truth, they said, is that Hasbro is eager to transfer its branded products into movies and the best way to do that is to spread them around or self-develop and then go back to studios with scripts and talent, because board games don't automatically lend themselves seamlessly to narrative films and because these movies are expensive to make...

While Hasbro recently set a John Hlavin-scripted adaptation of the board game Risk with Sony Pictures and Overbrook's Will Smith and James Lassiter, Goldner and Schneir don't need studios in the development phase. Hasbro continues to develop Monopoly with Scott Free as a potential directing vehicle for Ridley Scott. Magic The Gathering, the other dropped projects, has no attachments at this point.

They already made a Clue movie and it was great

I'd love to see a Magic: The Gathering movie if it was similar to Rounders

I'm imagining a Hungry Hungry Hippos movie ala Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.

I'll probably call it Attila.

Taylor Kitsch

awesome

The writers will draft a take that Verbinski and his fellow producers came up with that retains the murder mystery spirit of the board game, but broadens the setting to a global stage...

Wait. What?

In Lithuania, with an atomic bomb.

I'm very fond of the original movie of Clue and lately I always feel like watching it, for some reason.

A global stage-that sounds terrible! Some of those other movies sound terrifying-Candyland? Ouija?

I can't stop laughing. Or at least internally chuckling - it's a smile that won't stop.

The first scene will, naturally, be a mansion exploding.

Is Clue the only movie to try the dumb "each theater gets a different ending" trick?

That movie is like the pinnacle of $5 DVD comedy

can't help but wonder who they will cast to play Gloppy in the Candyland movie

ha

Surprised no one has mentioned the Rock Em Sock Em Robots movie w Hugh Jackman.

Connect Four trilogy

Ouija, which has McG attached to direct and Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form producing

McG AND Michael Bay? Based on a board game? The Platonic ideal of a shit film, surely.

I enjoyed the Australian TV series based on Clue a lot. A much much better way of doing it than a new film adaption (the original Clue is obviously unimpeachably awesome though).

can we have a Seventh Seal remake where Death and the knight play Pictionary

wait, never mind, that wouldn't work -- make it Yahtzee

or Jenga

Hasbro continues to develop Monopoly with Scott Free as a potential directing vehicle for Ridley Scott.

OLIVER STONE, IDIOTS! Let's "Gordon Gecko" this fucker up!

Magic The Gathering... has no attachments at this point.

Too "niche market" one imagines. Can HBO unearth the white elephant within?

Christ, I can't get over this article. I wanna study every single statement. Write a paper on my findings. A part of me is laughing very hard and a part of me is just reeling with... I, dunno, contempt? Dumbfoundedness? Admiration for the chutzpah on display? The dearth of ideas has always been a given, but this is... damned amazing. Maybe I should just keep tabs on these things.

Cowboys? Aliens? Ryan Reynolds as Jason Bateman raping Judd Apatow's wife but for the grace of diarrhea?

I have a headache.

It also does seem odd that someone thought it was worth shelling out millions to the rights of 'Battleship', when all they've incorporated in the film would appear to be the presence of battleships, hardly an idea that needed to be paid for

I would totally watch a Monopoly film.

But it should be this sort of surreal thing where power brokers are buying and selling giant red/green plastic properties as if they're normal buildings and they never acknowledge the fact that they're giant pieces of plastic.

next charlie kaufman vehicle iirc

The big question is why Hasbro are releasing any of these theatrically. They have their own channel now.

An Operation movie would be pretty awesome

Cowboys? Aliens? Ryan Reynolds as Jason Bateman raping Judd Apatow's wife but for the grace of diarrhea?

Maybe films aren't such a good idea for you, imho, if you have this much trouble separating fiction from reality.

next charlie kaufman vehicle iirc

No, that would be mousetrap the movie.

these movies should all be set in the same Hasbro universe, so you can have crossovers, like maybe the monopoly thimble briefly appears in the Risk movie.

Then later you can some sort of super movie where playing pieces from various board games join together to play some sort of super board game.

Scrabble starring Russell Crowe

xpost -- Like I need Joss Whedon telling the world about how the shoe is a symbol of existentialism.

I would love to see a live action version of Hungry Hungry Hippoes

here's a pretty good article about what happened. basically universal execs were floundering around hoping to grab onto any sort of franchise they could and they ended up in this ridiculous situation.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/11/ron_meyer_may_be_out_at_univer.html

But at least the source material for those movies actually had adventures at their core. What was the jumping-off point for a board game or Stretch Armstrong? "Except for Transformers and G.I. Joe, there is no mythology [in a Hasbro product]," sneers one producer who has worked with the toy company, adding, "What's the point of a Ouija board film or fucking Candy Land, except creative bankruptcy?"

Everyone killing it on this thread IMO.

Hearing a producer break down and claim some semblence of defeat always does the soul good.