Have you read this story? Here is a snippet:
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.”
I guess Universal figured that none of the rides in their theme park could be franchised into a movie. So it goes.
It’s not really a surprising thing, to have movies based on games. Why, there are literally dozens of movies based on video games. Rumor has it that one of them might not be terrible. Besides, we’ve already had a cartoon Candy Land movie, a cult classic movie based off of the game Clue, a horror trilogy based off of the Ouija/witch board, and the Ashley Judd vehicle Bug which was based off of Milton Bradley’s classic toddler game “Cootie.”
Thats not even mentioning Go based on the ancient Chinese board game played on a 19 by 19 grid!
Really the only surprise is that we’ve yet to have a Stretch Armstrong movie.
And where is my Slinky movie? I think it’d make a nifty horror flick. Killer springs everywhere. You just need to slow the cadence of the Slinky theme and get some little girls in white dresses to sing it like a jump-rope song.
What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs and makes a slinkety sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing,
Everyone knows it’s Slinky.
Those’re scarier than the classic lyrics, right?
Who walks the stair without a care
It shoots so high in the sky.
Bounce up and down just like a clown.
Everyone knows its Slinky.
The best present yet to give or get
The kids will all want to try.
The hit of the day when you’re ready to playEveryone knows it’s Slinky.
It’s Slinky, It’s Slinky
for fun it’s the best of the toys
It’s Slinky, It’s Slinky
the favorite of girls and boys.
I think I’ve gone off topic.
Now, I’m not quite sure how one gets a narrative structure out of something like Monopoly. Perhaps I could figure such a thing out had I ever seen a game of Monopoly played to completion. No one really wins Monopoly right? You just play until everybody quits from boredom or everybody storms out in anger. Monopoly isn’t so much a game as it is a test of endurance. It’s like treading water for 30 minutes.
How fitting is it then that Ridley Scott is developing the picture? His movies generally supply me with either much boredom or anger.
Perfect guy for the job, eh?
I’m sure people can make competent war movies out of something like Battleship or Risk, but why bother? These games don’t have characters or unique weapons or machines. All you get is a brand. Is the brand really a benefit at that point? You could call Grey’s Anatomy Operation,
But, in the hopes of getting cut a check from movie/game companies, please allow me to pitch a couple of ideas.
1. Sorry – Based off of the popular Parker Brothers game, four sets of gang members must travel around a large city block, traversing a dangerous series of slides, desperately trying to make it home. It’s like The Warriors, only they travel in more of a loop.
2. Parcheesi – I’ve played Parcheesi a hundred times, but the only thing I can remember about it is that the thing you use to roll the dice kinda looks like a roll of toilet paper. So, I’m not really sure what the rules of Parcheesi are, but I know that the movie will have a lot of Black Jack. . . And Hookers.
3. Black Jack – We follow the life of proud African American John Johnson as he tries to survive to the age of 21.
4. Hungry, Hungry Hippos – Quick and easy pitch: It’s like Anaconda, only with Hippos.
5. Trivial Pursuit – A bunch of nihilists sit around discussing the esoteric whilst eating pie. It’s like Waking Life, only with more nihilism and pie.
6. Snakes and Ladders – Reprising his role as Neville Flinn, Samuel L. Jackson is tired of all these mother-fucking snakes on all these mother-fucking ladders.
7. Tiddly Winks – In a futuristic society, an underground world of drugs and pornography has grown around a deadly game of chance played with small plastic discs and tiny squares of felt.
8. Uno – A race of mole people conspire to kill Kelly Ripa on the set of “Live! with Regis and Kelly” as to harvest her organs in order to save the mole queen who is dying of pancreatic cancer. Oh, Uno. . .
uh,
. . . they also eat some deep dish pizza.
