It looks like Hasbro is whoring out every brand possible in a new deal they stuck with Universal. We get the scoop today from the professionals at Variety:
Universal Pictures has announced a six-year partnership with Hasbro to produce at least four feature films based on branded properties. The properties include “Monopoly,” “Candy Land,” “Clue,” “Ouija,” “Battleship,” “Magic, The Gathering” and “Stretch Armstrong.” The deal comes after the successful screen transformation of the Hasbro property “Transformers,” which DreamWorks and Paramount turned into a Michael Bay-directed global hit, and which has a sequel scheduled to begin production this year.
“This deal gives Universal access to some of the greatest brands in the world,” Shmuger and Linde said in a statement. “Hasbro’s portfolio of products has tremendous emotional resonance with children and adults. They offer an exciting opportunity for us to develop tentpole movies with built-in global brand awareness, which is a key component of our slate strategy.”
How the fuck are you going to pull off Battleship the movie? Are you going to have a film about 10 boats that launch missiles at each other till one remains? You know at one point when a captain is going down with the ship he will proclaim: “you sunk my battleship”. If video game films always suck, I can only imagine the type of films we are going to get that are based on classic table games.
I enjoy the card game Magic: The Gathering, the name is horrible but the game itself is gobs of fun. I really do not want to see a film based on the game; it is going to be awkward. They do have enough imagery, and characters to make a fantasy style film in the world of Dominaria, but Hasbro has shown in the past that they are more concerned with moving future product than they are about making a quality film celebrating their work. (Remember when they killed Optimus to sell Rodimus and Ultra Magnus?)
This just seems strange , they are pimping out all these brand for the familiarity of the name. I am doubtful that any of these projects will be good and I get confused when I try to consider how they will approach them. I guess we will wait and see. Until then, unpack your game of battleship, and enjoy it as it was intended.
