The Boardgames That Could Be Films

The Boardgames That Could Be Films

Posted on Friday April 13, 2012, 17:13 by Eve Barlow in Empire States

By Battleship’s logic, you can play a boardgame, think about Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay at the same time and have a lightbulb moment of “HEY, this should be a movie”. Not only that, you can take your crazy lightbulb moment and actually run with it, all the way to Hollywood, and make a mega blockbuster, feature-length, globally released film. Inspired by Peter Berg, I opened up my toybox and thought about the boardgames I’d like to pitch as barmy films. Let’s roll the dice…

Connect 4
Matt Damon and Ed Nortonstar in a movie about high stakes, addiction and the dangerous game. Meeting in illegal underground clubs run by the Russian mob (John Malkovich plays an eccentric Connect 4 GOD), the pair travel from place to place perfecting their red/yellow line strategy in order to make good on the debt Norton accumulated while inside (for seriously risky Connect 4-related activity). Damon’s girlfriend eventually leaves him after realising that nothing can take him away from his one true love (Connect 4) but that doesn’t bother the brainiac whose ultimate purpose in life is to connect four same-coloured coins in a row.

Trivial Pursuit
Imagine if you lived and died based on whether you knew what a gnu was (the tagline alone is worth putting this one into production). Ancient legends tell of a time when Angelina Jolie is a leather shorts-clad archaeologist travelling around the world demonstrating her unparallelled expertise across a range of subjects (English history; plant biology; Small Faces, the pre-Rod Stewart years) while collecting different coloured pieces of an ancient, little understood wheel. That’s it, in a nutshell. Cue lots of acrobatic sequences, knife throwing and a wealth of different accents from around the globe.

Monopoly
Michael Douglas is a greedy London property owner who decides to spend all his money buying up the whole place in one journey (he travels with an iron he has a weird attachment to). He pays for it later, however, as other budding Foxtons protégés (including a dog played by Uggie) catch up with him and force him to mortgage everything until he has no choice but to declare himself bankrupt while standing in a climactic scene in the middle of London’s Water Works. Monopoly: The Movie has similar potential to the neverending Bond franchise, with a film for every single city in every single country in the whole wide world.

Dream Phone
Somebody fancies Anne Hathaway and nobody knows who it is. But it could be any one of 24 dudes who all look like Zack from Saved By The Bell (he makes a cameo appearance) and hang out at diners and malls with every major name in Hollywood (Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Rabbit and WhatsherfaceoffLabyrinth). Anne spends the next 90 minutes frantically calling all the men in her Blackberry contact book (HELLO PRODUCT PLACEMENT) but most of them just aren’t that into her. Until… on Valentine’s Day the secret admirer turns out to be ghostface from Scream and everyone gets it.

Twister
Elijah Wood is Lord Of The Spins. He is on a quest to return a relic he found in his Nan’s closet to its home. But the path is fraught with danger and lucky for him, there are a team of people from all four corners (Left Foot, Right Hand, Right Foot andLeft Hand) of the Earth (let’s call it Planet Floor) to ensure that all the dragons and monsters that stand in his way are temporarily distracted. Elijah’s friends meet their foes at the Battle of Min-att Twistrith and despite being overwhelmed by their brute force and mightier numbers overcome them with the stealth and flexibility they recall from playing Twister at childhood birthday parties.

Mousetrap
There is a mouse running around a house and the owners are trying to build a trap to get themouse and destroy it and oh hang on a minute...

That's it for us: what are your radical game-to-movie suggestions?