BLOGS
As everyone knows, board games are the new hot properties in Hollywood. They have name recognition, there's usually a copy in half the households in America, and there's usually a hint of a plot to kick things off with. So while Warner Bros. is still trying to figure out what to do with their A-list superheroes, toymaker Hasbro has used the success of the toy-based G.I. Joe and Transformers films to turn their greatest-hits home games into movies with Universal Pictures. Here's a list of the games that will get movies, and the games we want to see on the big screen.
Battleship - Hancock director Peter Berg will adapt this naval warfare game into what we can only assume will be a naval warfare movie. We're curious to see how he'll make this more interesting than Pearl Harbor.
Clue - Already made into a comedy in the 1980s with Tim Curry and an all-star cast, the new version of this whodunit will be directed by Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski.
Monopoly - Trying to imagine a Ridley Scott-directed movie focusing on the state of the economy, and how that translates into the banking board game we all know and secretly hate, makes our brain hurt.
Candyland - The director of Enchanted, making a movie about a gumdrop kingdom with gingerbread houses and spun-sugar dreams? We actually really, really want to see this.
Ouija - Michael Bay's production company, making a horror movie about a board game that summons spirits? Somebody send that man a copy of the Eliza Dushku movie Open Graves, which is about basically the same thing.
Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots - While it's not an officially licensed movie, the upcoming Real Steel, about robots who box in a future where human boxing is forbidden, sounds like the perfect translation.
Now here's what we want to see:
Chutes and Ladders - Fleeing from a serial killer, a young couple escapes underground, becoming lost in a subterranean network of ladders and pipes. They need to find a way out, while staying one step ahead of the masked, knife-wielding psychopath in there with them.
Trivial Pursuit - If Monopoly can be about the economy, then why can't Trivial Pursuit (or Pursuits, in the film), be a romantic comedy about a competitive trivia expert who falls in love with a girl, but risks losing her when he remembers more about Science and Nature than about their relationship?
Operation - In this tense medical drama, a medical student on vacation in Central America is kidnapped and forced to operate on a seriously wounded revolutionary leader. He has to remove bullets and shrapnel from the man without making any mistakes, or touching the sides, or else he dies!
Risk - In the future, the entire Earth is controlled by six men, and every year they secretly declare war on each other, jockeying for dominance from within their command centers. When a young draft-dodger decides that the senseless killing needs to stop, he joins an underground group of rebels looking to return the power to the people.
Jenga - A sorcerer rules the great city of Jenga by fear, and only comes out of his tower long enough to oversee the punishing of the innocent and give displays of his magical prowess. A young thief, dreaming of what treasures await, removes a loose stone to get inside, but once he sees the secrets of the tower, he knows that he must destroy it the same way.
Hungry, Hungry Hippos - Searching for hidden treasure in darkest Africa, fortune-hunters have to contend with super-intelligent, carnivorous hippos trained to kill. It's like Congo, but with hippos.
What board game would you like to see as a movie? Roll the dice and take your chances below.
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I am 100% opposed to the Clue remake, even if it is allegedly going to be done as a thriller and not a comedy. SUCK.
How sad is it that Zach's fake movies sound more plausible than the real ones. I would totally go see "Hungry, Hungry Hippos."
(By "go see" I mean, of course, "Netflix it and pretend they sent it to me by mistake if anyone sees me with it")
Risk actually sounds interesting. I think I'd see it.
It's a shame Barrel of Monkeys isn't really a boardgame...
(I'd like to see Arkham Horror made as a movie, but who would recognize it as a boardgame?)
What? No work up for Mousetrap? Not the Agatha Christie play-- the game where a group of kids has to travel through a Rube Goldbergian house to save their beloved pet? It's fun for the whole family. Chris Columbus could direct.
Wow, I didn't read the intro paragraph very well, and thought that all of those movies were fake. I can't believe they're making all of them! Also, can I get a shout-out to the best board game movie ever...Jumanji?
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I used to despise spammers, but now that they've adopted Dadaist prose as their art form, they're kind of growing on me.
SETTLERS OF CATAN starring Franks Potente, Michael Fassbender, and Max von Sydow; directed by Tom Tykwer!! I'm there opening night!
...that clearly should be [i]Franka[/i] Potente...
...oh, and also PUERTO RICO starring Antonio Banderas, and AGRICOLA with Kevin McKidd & Naomi Watts.
... and I can't even type in $%&*@#!*& HTML codes properly!!!... (commits seppuku)
I just hope they film the Welcome Back, Kotter "Up Your Nose with a Rubber Hose" board game. I still have that one in my closet somewhere.
For your consideration: Martin Scorsese's "The Princes of Florence", starring Andy Garcia and Monica Bellucci.
Or for more family fare, there's Robert Zemeckis's "Cranium" starring Steve Carrell, Seth Rogen and Joel McHale.
If you loved Tron, you'll love Gerard Butler in... [i]Blokus[\i]!
SUMMER 2011
Junta?
You'd probably play it straight, with a corrupt Central American military dictatorship, but with one of the commanders realising this isn't a good idea and couping to help the downtrodden masses
What about *Othello*: The Movie, where the hero/ine journeys through fractured lands, turning towns towards the good, in a strategic mannar? The ending could be some climactic battle, good (white) vs, evil (black), or even subvert the expectations where the protagonists are black. Could also work as a political thriller.
I know it's not a board game (but still a game), I would love for Oregon Trail to be made into a movie. Too many hours of my elementary schooling spent mastering that game. :)
Last year I picked up a really keen game called "Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game" which I would love to see adapted. There's probably too much narrative to fit into a single movie, though... it might need at least a mini-series.
POWER GRID starring Ryan Reynolds, directed by Timur Bekmambetov!
THE TRADERS OF GENOA starring Jim Broadbent and Julie Christie!
DIRK HENN'S SHOGUN starring Chow Yun-Fat, directed by Zhang Yimou!!
A movie version of Fortress America would be both brilliant and timely.
Talisman.
Ker-Plunk could actually make an outstanding sci-fi movie directed by David Fincher.
Space explorers crash on a desolate moon/planet where the only sign that there had ever been life is a gigantic cylindrical tower with a series of rods piercing is at the halfway point. When an exploratory party goes in to investigate, they are locked in by an inpenetrable automatic mechanism.
From inside they report that there appears to be daylight visible through the top, but there are a bunch of boulders held in place by the rods in their way. The outside party has no choice but to scale the outside of building and start carefully removing rods to precipitate controlled and limited dr0ps of boulder to try and give their partners something to climb up out of the building.
Add the subplot of your choice involving either troglodyte warriors or superintelligent aliens monitoring "the experiment"
Then market it as a sequel to Zardoz.
Um, that movie you suggested for Operation has already been made.
It was a Cary Grant film from 1950 called "Crisis" except, instead of shrapnel, he had to remove a brain tumor from Jose Ferrer. Otherwise, EVERYTHING ELSE WAS THE SAME.
You forgot Jumanji. The Robin Williams film that had him trapped in a board game. The board game came after... but it was still based on a board game.
'Ouija' was already made - 1986's 'Witchboard', starring Patch from Days Of Our Lives and Tawny Kitaen.
That Chutes and Ladders one sounds great!!!
I stopped reading after Peter BeRg was misspelled.
What about Scrabble?
I think the made up ones sounded better than the real ones. Maybe you could be a screenwriter...