Nothing passes time like playing a board game or watching a movie. Then again, who has time these days? Leave it to Hollywood to come up with a solution. From Variety:
Universal Pictures has announced a six-year partnership with Hasbro to produce at least four feature films based on branded properties.
The properties include “Monopoly,” “Candy Land,” “Clue,” “Ouija,” “Battleship,” “Magic, The Gathering” and “Stretch Armstrong.”
Everyone knows and loves the first five games mentioned, but whether they will be loved as movies is another question entirely.
Movies based on board games, after all, are following in some much-criticized footsteps. “Like the board game on which it is based, the movie ‘Clue’ is most fun in its early stages,” Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times in 1985. Ten years later, she wrote that “Jumanji” had “the invasive weirdness of ‘Gremlins’ but none of the charm.”
Even the prodigious listmakers at About.com struggled to build a top-eight list, with the guide complaining at the outset: “Not enough movies use board games as a central part of the plot.” (Chess and checkers excepted, of course.)
When Hasbro signed up an agent to shop for deals about a year ago, a movie buff posted a journal to Rotten Tomatoes conceding that there was at least some potential:
OK, fine, “Candy Land” could probably make for a half-decent kids’ movie, and I suppose you could maybe make a real estate comedy called “Monopoly” — but “Clue” has already been done, and so has the Ouija Board (done to death, one might say). And a movie version of “Trivial Pursuit” would be just that: a trivial pursuit.
As you consider all of the above, don’t forget that three movies based on a theme-park ride are currently in the top 30 grossing movies in American history. And pass the dice, please.
Tags: , Are There Enough Movies Based on Board Games?, board games, games, monolopy
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