The first of several Hasbro and Milton Bradley board game properties-turned-movies, Battleship, will arrive in theaters next summer. However, Universal is already being more cautious about exactly which game-based film projects it decides to move forward with.
Gore Verbinski’s long-in-development Clue movie was dropped by Universal a while back – and now the studio has also opted to not produce the Ouija movie being developed by director McG (Terminator: Salvation) and producer Michael Bay.
Vulture is reporting that the Hasbro project has already been offered to, but dismissed, by Paramount Pictures, which has made a bundle off Bay and Hasbro’s Transformers movies. There’s no word from the site about what the exact proposed budget for the Ouija adaptation, but it was apparently considerable enough ($100-150 million, perhaps) to scare off Universal. That’s actually a relatively easy task right now, given the studio’s recent (costly) failed investment in Cowboys & Aliens.
McG was fashioning the Ouija film as an effects-driven, family-oriented fantasy adventure, along the lines of Jumanji and The Mummy. Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) penned the most recent draft of the script, which was also worked on by Evan Spiliotopoulos (Snow White and the Huntsman) – as well as TRON: Legacy screenwriting duo Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis – at different points during its development.
Universal will unveil 'Battleship' in 2012
Battleship is definitely a costly (re: $200 million) gamble for Universal, but also one that seems like a safer bet than Ouija would have been. The Battleship teaser essentially made the film look like a new installment in the Transformers series – with a new cast and cloaked alien spaceships instead of giant CGI robots. In other words, the movie is being sold as the sort of flashy and mindlessly-fun flick that people often flock to during the summer movie season.
Board game projects like the new Clue, Ouija, and Ridley Scott’s Monopoly movie now seem less likely to be fast-tracked by Universal or anyone else – if only because studios are simply waiting to see whether or not Battleship turns a tidy profit, before they start investing loads of cash into other expensive game-based titles like Candyland or Monsterpocalypse.
Most of these board game movies (like Ouija) seemingly have little-to-nothing to do with their inspiration; essentially, they’re just looking to benefit from brand name recognition. Include a couple of plot details that tie the film back into the original game (see: naval warfare in Battleship) and you’ve got what now passes for an “adaptation.” So it’s hard to be too invested in any of these films, unless there is top notch talent working behind-the-scenes – and that wasn’t really the case with Ouija.
We will keep an eye on Ouija and let you know if another studio decides to pick the project up.
Source: Vulture
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A family movie about a Ouija board ? Yeah because summoning demons and the dead is fun for the whole family. My question is do people even play board games anymore ?
Yes (to the second thing).
Vic
Figured video games would have rendered board games obsolete by now. It’s not like people actually get together and socialize these days.
Ouija might have physically been a board, but I’m not sure it really qualifies as a boardgame. And if you think anything mass produced could have any mystical properties (despite fans of the iPad2 might say) well really now.
Obviously the premise behind the board itself was far-fetched at best. That’s why a movie based on it is even more ridiculous. What was it going to be an hour and thirty-minutes of people touching a piece of plastic ?
Families still do. Video games and MMO’s are slowly taking over as social entertainment though (especially with the advent of the Wii) but I don’t think anything will ever replace games like Chess, Checkers, Monopoly, and so on.
Even outside of families, with friends, AD&D is also still being played, though it took a HUGE hit with the fourth edition that borrowed too much from the World of Warcraft franchise.
Never considered Ouija a board game though.
I remember a SeaQuest episode where, in the future, mankind has nearly been wiped out because everyone communicated using virtual reality (no one socialized anymore). The only humans left were a boy and a girl and they were playing a game that would have eventually killed one of them, thus destroying humanity. I used to play video games but I have more enjoyment playing board games with friends and family. Kids today, all they want to do is play playstations and X-Boxes. I just wonder if the writer of that SeaQuest episode may have actually seen the future.
And I must have mentally missed this the first time but, did they say there was a cloaked alien spaceship in Battleship ?
It was revealed in the trailer – which was a brilliant move I think. I wouldn’t have been able to understand how a movie based on a board game like that would’ve worked without something like that.
I do agree it’s probably still going to be a rather mindless movie, but probably worth going to see at least once.
Ouija directed by McG and produced by Michael Bay?!?! Sounds like a recipe for crap soup, all that’s missing is Brett Ratner and Roland Emmerich executive producing.
Well since they’re not making Ouija it’ll free them up to make Checkers: The Movie from a script by Dean Devilin and M. Night Shayamalan.
I liked the Ouija move when it was released in the 80′s and called Witchboard.
Yeah and it’s not like they never made a family movie about a board game causing all types of cartoon havoc. Cough…..*Jumanji*
Films about actual board games, what a huge joke – I thought maybe it was April 01st. Can not wait for ‘Scrabble the Movie’, Yahtzee 2, Buckaroo the revenge, Mousetrap – The Missing Piece, Kerplunk Reserection, Hungry Hungry Hippos Vol 3, Ultimate Risk, CSI The Movie – Guess Who?, Snakes and Ladders on a Plane, Pirates of the College – Dead Mans Chess, The (Rubiks) Cube etc etc, I could go on!!