Hasbro’s hopes for their next three toy-to-movie endeavors
Hating on BATTLESHIP, Hasbro’s last big screen effort, is about as easy as fitting a round peg into a round hole. So I’ll skip the usual banter with myself about BATTLESHIP’s dubious contributions to anything at all positive in the world and get straight to it: Hasbro is back, and the battle for your wallets begins in 2013.
A three-picture deal has been signed with independent production company Emmett/Furla Films (THE TOMB, BROKEN CITY, END OF WATCH) to bring three Hasbro properties to theaters near you, those three properties being MONOPOLY, HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS, and ACTION MAN. The first of this on adaptation docket is MONOPOLY, with both companies hoping to make a start in 2013. There was at one time a MONOPOLY script bandied about Hollywood for a while with Ridley Scott attached to direct, but it is not known if that script will be used or if a new draft will be commissioned. HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS is, unfortunately, not being taken the “absurd horror” route that I might wish (just imagine: HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS 3DD). It will instead be made into an animated movie specifically aimed at children. And for the unfamiliar among you, ACTION MAN was essentially a British version of G. I. Joe that first launched back in the ’60s, so the route that movie’s going to take shouldn’t be too hard to imagine.
Emmett (of Emmett/Furla Films) revealed that the plan is “to make all three properties into family movies with broad appeal,” and that despite BATTLESHIP’s pricetag of $200 million he hopes to adapt each of these three properties for less than $100 million. It’ll be fun to see how that goes.
I can’t think of any HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS jokes for Rihanna that sound only sexual rather than sexual+cannibalistic