Movies are being announced based on classic board games and I struggle to think of why, but the one board game that did make a successful leap to the big screen was the Tim Curry romp “Clue”. Now Gore Verbinski has been attached to direct this remake of a film based on a board game.
Combining the best of two current Hollywood trends, the remake and the board game movie, Universal Pictures have reportedly hired Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) to direct a movie based on the murder mystery game Clue.
Now back in the 80s, there was a rare phenomenon that revolved around the first attempt at this movie.
There were multiple releases of the same movie, and like the game every time you played it, the results were different!
Now imagine an ensemble cast of characters taking on the iconic chromatic roles of Professor Plum, and Colonel Mustard (updated with a new version of the Clue Board Game last year with a video game designer and former athlete instead of Professor and Colonel) with an assortment of murder weapons and some dramatic “whodunnit” mystery suspense and you have a hit. But that wasn’t all. The movies were advertised as one of three versions.
You could watch the movie trying to figure out who did it, but aside from some slight changes, the first three quarters of the film were the same. Then at a turning point Tim Curry would announce that he had figured it out and would run you through the cause an effect of each person’s motives, where they were and at what time and how they did it all the while trailing along the cast in a wild energetic re-enactment.
The whole thing was a fun movie, and it was the first of its kind to draw people to a theater guaranteeing a different ending depending on which showing they went to. It was original and never again attempted at the boxoffice.
Can this work again? Will people go multiple times to see different endings? Or do you think they will remake this movie as a classic murder mystery film with only one ending intact?
Perhaps they will run the cast through the exercise of multiple endings which might end up on the DVD release to recreate the original charm (and adding value to the DVD release) but only one ending will see the big screen.
Check out this clip from the original. Pure Genius.
