As studios continue to move further and further away from the old-fashioned idea of bringing fresh and original ideas to fruition, and creating new and exciting movies that not only do well at the Box Office, but are actually good films, Columbia Pictures is not going down the sequel root, or producing another comic-book adaptation, but looking to capitalize on another in-built audience; people who love strategy board games; by adapting the classic game Risk into a feature film.
The studio has just hired John Hlavin (who’s written a couple of episodes of The Shield, and the upcoming Underworld 4: New Dawn) to write the script for the film which will eventually become a modern-day global thriller, when it eventually enters production, and joins the slew of other toy-based movies currently in the pipeline; including Battleship, and Stretch Armstrong.
While there’s obviously no release date, no director, no cast, and at this point not even a semblance of a plot to speak of, it remains to be seen whether a movie based on a board game can effectively work, or more importantly convince fans of the game to buy a cinema ticket; as surely in order to do so, they would have to be interested in global thrillers (not specifically Risk the board game), and if that’s the case, why not skip the rights acquisition, and pesky adaptation, and simply develop a powerful and engaging thriller that’s worth watching anyway?
Matt Wheeldon.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter.
