Believe it or not, there really are one or two board game/toy products left to turn into movies. Yes, now someone – in this case rights owners Hasbro and production company Emmet/Furla films –believes that it’s time Hungry Hungry Hippos and Action Man took their turn in the cinematic spotlight.
But before either of those is sucked into the development vortex, there’s one other property under the new, three-film deal. Monopoly, which Ridley Scott has been planning to make for years, will be first on the slate.
And though Scott had been intending to direct it himself, he’ll now simply get a producer credit. The script has been through the word processors of Scott Alexander, Pamela Pettler and Scott Beddor (and likely several other uncredited people), but there’s no mention of whether a new writer will be brought on. The LA Times’ report claims that the companies want to be in production next year, so there’s still time for several rewrites.
As for Action Man, we’re somewhat mystified, since the US version of the character, G.I. Joe has already had two films made from it, even if we’re all still waiting to see the second one. But we suppose there’s plenty of source material to go around and action movies about heroic soldiers are a staple of the genre.
But Hungry Hungry Hippos? We’re actually intrigued to see how that makes it into movie form, though we’d guess there could be some inspiration from the success of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatball****s.
All three could be huge, but Emmett/Furla boss Randall Emmett seems convinced he can keep the budgets trimmed. A wise idea in this post-Battleship world...