Boy am I ever happy to read this news despite being a tad curious as to how it would have turned out. Ever since the massive success of translating the TRANSFORMERS toy line into a trilogy of box-office champions, it seems that every popular game from Hasbro has at one point been considered to also be featured in their own film.
One of those chosen was the classic CLUE game under the skillful eye of Gore Verbinski but that of course never came to fruition and for obvious reasons I think. The other Hasbro product most recently being looked at though and the one we’re focusing on here is the classic spirit communicating game OUIJA.
If this next bit doesn’t make you giggle, I don’t know what possibly could. It was planned for a while that Universal Studios was going to option the rights to the game and then under the watchful eye of producer Michael Bay and director McG, would be turned into a “JUMANJI” type action adventure film. That’s right, a board game that has been linked with spirit possession and evil origins since its inception would instead be transformed (pun not intended) into a family adventure flick. WTF?! Either way it might not work out as Universal has officially placed the project on an extended/possibly permanent hiatus as they don’t appear to have much faith in the adapting the game (you think?).
Another factor of course is that they’ve already poured a shit-load of money into adapting the world-famous BATTLESHIP game (lord knows why) which is said to be around the $200 million mark before marketing costs so I can understand if they don’t feel like making yet another large investment to another game/toy franchise that may or may not be a flop. It’s rumored at the moment that Bay and McG are planning to shop the game around to other studios including Paramount who obviously are greatly in debt to Bay for delivering their first billion dollar film ever which was TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON. Time will only tell if they can get it off the ground.
Click HERE to read the full story from Vulture.
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley