By Universal Pictures has apparently lost interest in adapting the Hasbro board game Clue for the big screen, as today Deadline learned that they’ve dropped out of the project. Clue was one of seven properties based on Hasbro games that were slated to come out of the studio, a deal that included Battleship, which will feature aliens and half the cast of the HBO series “True Blood”. This is the third Hasbro title to be abandoned by Universal, the first two being Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly.
The movie itself is not dead, however. Hasbro intends to continue development on the movie, and Gore Verbinski — who was expected to direct — is staying with the film. Hasbro has already moved to hire Flash Gordon writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless to pen the script for Clue, which apparently takes the murder mystery motif out of the mansion into a more global setting.
I can’t for the life of me imagine why Hasbro (or Universal for that matter) thought people would want to see movies based on it’s popular line of board games, but then again I absolutely adore the original Clue. Of course, that Clue shares little in common with the board game other than names of the rooms and the guests of the dinner party. From the sounds of it, this new Clue movie will have even less in common with the board game than the original, which is fine by me. I’d rather not see one of my personal favorites get rehashed. They’d probably replace Tim Curry with Russell Brand and that just cannot happen.
[Via Deadline]