Let's face it friends and enemies, when Hollywood is pulling its ideas from its game shelf then we are in some serious trouble. Yes, Clue is an awesome movie, and the fact that there is apparently never going to be a special edition with commentary, featurettes, or even the trailer is a complete and utter travesty. That being said, board games are not usually the stuff of gripping narrative.
Next summer, director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Hancock) will bring us Battleship. Details on the film are very sketchy, but our guess is that the film will basically be a naval war movie that is simply trying to capitalize on a name we all know to bring in some extra viewers and maybe seem kid-safe in the bargain. It's basically the same tactic romantic comedies use by naming the film after a well-known and completely unrelated pop song. We're looking at you, Addicted to Love.
What we are willing to bet every book in our house, though, is that we will not see a true Battleship film, which would basically be the story of two completely blind navies firing at each other at random. Something like Zatoichi meets Tora! Tora! Tora!.
Well Hollywood, whenever you go creatively bankrupt Art Attack is here to help you out. Since it's games you want, here are 5 others that would make stellar films.
The Pitch: Frankly, we're surprised that no one has even done a direct-to-video animated adaptation of the many, many, many stories being played out in the popular battle card game. There is literally any kind of fantasy story you could want to work with. They've got vampires, they've got ice age battles, they've got steampunk, and they've even got goblins firing machine guns.
Each series already comes complete with characters, story arcs, and the art already done for you. Now they even put out novelizations of each set as they are released, so 90 percent of the work is done. True, it's a relatively small part of the population that plays it, but they already gave $60 million to make a Dungeon Siege movie so Hollywood literally doesn't even have the hint of bloody stumps to stand on.
The Director: Dave McKean. We were stoked to hear that the director of MirrorMask was finally putting out another film, Luna, later this year. Everything that used to be true about Tim Burton is still true about Dave McKean, and we would love to see him take on the story of Phyrexia or Ravnica.
Interestingly enough, the British already made a game show out of Mouse Trap. This makes is doubly ready for Hollywood as they can latch onto an existing name brand and remake a foreign work at the same time. Somewhere a producer just ruined a pair of pants. On the up side, that logic might get us a film version of The Crystal Maze.
The Pitch: We don't know anyone who actually played the game Mouse Trap. You just built the trap and made it work over and over again. Executing the Rube Goldberg device was a pure rush to the adolescent mind, a feeling of power over complexity.
We think Pixar should take on making a Mouse Trap movie. It could be a sort of reverse Great Escape where a group of mice enlist the help of a lonely young child in order to help them construct a massive trap for their dictatorial mouse ruler. It would be a wonderful lesson about standing up for yourself and the power of teamwork.
The Director: Well, it's Pixar, so you're talking Brad Bird. He's taken to tackling some wonderfully dark and complex storylines in some of Pixar's movies.