Apparently, there are a bunch of movie studios out there looking to turn old board games into films, including Risk, Candyland, and Battleship. Believe it or not, Battleship is actually currently in post-preduction and is due out next year – and somehow they got Liam Neeson to star in it along side Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker and Rihanna. Yeah, I can’t figure that one out either, but I digress. . .
The latest board game to be put on the track to movie obscurity theaters is the board game Risk. If for some reason you don’t remember this game – or have just never played it – it’s “the game of world domination” in which players try to take over the world with their armies doing battle by rolling dice. Or, as I remember it, “the game of losing friends because the same game has gone on for six weeks now while one of your asshole friends has holed up in Australia with a massive army and refuses to surrender despite the fact he is only prolonging the inevitable”, seriously, give it up Jimmy, you dick!
In any case, looks like Columbia Pictures has hired John Hlavin (The Shield, Underworld: New Dawn) to pen this “Cold War-era action thriller”:
Screenwriter John Hlavin is angling for world domination — in the form of the classic Parker Brothers board game Risk.
Columbia Pictures is developing an action thriller based on the Cold War-era strategy game, in which players form armies and use them to attack the territories belonging to other players, and the studio is hiring Hlavin to pen the adaptation. The game, now owned by Hasbro (also home of Transformers and G.I. Joe–both at Paramount), was launched in the 1950s by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse (The Red Balloon). –THR
What? Columbia Pictures should save some of that money in their budget and just hire me to write the screenplay for Risk, I would do it for five dollars. As an aspiring film-writer guy who writes down drunken ideas on a napkin in a bar, this is how I would tackle this film:
The film opens up, Ang Lee split-screen style, four world leaders are looking at a map of the world from the war-room in their respective home countries, each planning for world domination. As the film goes on, battles take place all over the world as these leaders strategically position and advance their armies around the globe with their forces growing in numbers with each country they take over. Over the course of several years and seemingly never-ending battles, one leader has taken over the entire world – except for the island of Australia where one leader with an army the island can barely support makes his final stand. The final six hours of the film will be the would-be world conquerer sending wave after wave of men into Australia slowly chipping away at this coward’s numbers of men in battle sequences in the style of Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Saving Private Ryan, and Shoot ’em Up. As Australia is finally overwhelmed and taken over, the new President of the World sits back in his chair and lights up a cigar in victory as celebrations occur in the streets outside his palace – but he doesn’t seem 100% pleased, and this is where we discover the twist! SPOILER ALERT: It turns out that these four men vying for world domination were once friends. But now their not. Because the game of world domination makes you lose friends because assholes named Jimmy just build an army in Australia, cornering themselves for the entire game but managing to build a pile of armies that takes forever to conquer. This is a bullshit game, and no one likes it.
Boom. Done. I just wrote the outline for a movie based on the board game, Risk. Total movie run-time: 47 hours.
You’re welcome Hollywood.