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It’s All Fun & Games

It’s All Fun & Games

Remember a few years ago when Hollywood seemed to be making a movie out of every old TV show they could think of? There was Bewitched, Dukes of Hazzard and Get Smart (seriously, they can remake Yogi Bear but can’t figure out how to make Arrested Development into a movie? C’mon!). And a lot of even worse fare like I Spy, which coincided with the death throes of Eddie Murphy’s career.

Apparently, Tinseltown has run out of TV shows to ruin, er, honor, so they’ve turned their attention to games. More specifically, board games. This fall’s Real Steel purports to be based on a short story called “Steel,” but really, one glance at the preview shows the true inspiration for the film is obviously Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em Robots. It just has 100 percent more Hugh Jackman than the childhood game ever did.

That’s just the beginning. Universal Pictures is planning a film version of Monopoly with Ridley Scott (Gladiator) at the helm, and the screenwriters of the Candyland movie recently made news for saying they wanted their films to be as epic as Lord of the Rings. And Battleship is set to become a film starring Liam Neeson and, um, Rihanna. While it remains to be seen if any of these movies will be any good (spoiler: probably not), it at least opens the door for a gritty reinterpretation of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Board Games With Movie Potential:

The Game of Life
Reality is random
Risk
Don’t mock Ukraine
Settlers of Catan
Still too many sheep
Mouse Trap
A PG version of Saw

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