Universal is getting out of the board game business

Hasbro and Universal: A Match Made in Candy Hell

There’s a really interesting story over at NY Mag about the colossal failure of the partnership between Hasbro and Universal. The whole thing is definitely worth a read if you want to see people get torn apart for blowing mountains of money on movies about Stretch Armstrong, Battleship, Candy Land, and Ouija boards, but I’ve picked out a few highlights for you.

Signed in 2008, the pact originally anticipated a far-less-costly moviemaking world in which movie stars wouldn’t be the attraction, brands would. And yet: Candy Land has now been scooped up by another studio not because of the inherent attraction of the board game, but precisely because it would make a good vehicle for a big star.

Again, that star is Adam Sandler. If I were a betting man, I would put most of my fingers and toes on the fact that this will make Burnsy’s list of worst movies of the year. Provided you know a bookie who accepts fingers and toes as payment. I’m good for it, I SWEAR! [hides stumps behind back]

The reaction from many in the creative community was scorn, followed by resignation: Had it come to this? A latex rubber doll filled with gelled corn syrup was now what passed for intellectual property?

HOLLYWOOD EXECUTIVE: Whoawhoawhoa. Hold on. Tell me more about this Corn Syrup Guy. Does he know karate? Who’s the love interest? I’ll call Heigl’s people. Audiences love her.

Current Universal execs privately admit the “partnership” that was to have run through 2013 is effectively dead, and besides Battleship, which comes out May 18, not a single Hasbro property mentioned in that 2008 press release remains at Universal in active development. Rather than continue to pay the contractually obligated punitive $5 million fines for each film it dithered on, the studio agreed to pay a single, enormous multi-million-dollar penalty just to get out of business with Hasbro.

Just to be clear on this, the people at Hasbro are goddamn geniuses. They are a toy company, a company that makes toys, and they managed to get paid on both ends of a movie deal that just about anyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew was sketchy at best. I’m always fascinated by “go away” money. As in, “we owe you a $5 million penalty for each movie we don’t make, but we project a loss way, WAY in excess of that because this was a stupid idea from Day 1, so well give you a check for like $20 million right now if you go away.”

I need to get in that business. PRONTO.

Battleship is a giant action movie about a battleship officer leading a fight against aliens: Why did they even need a brand name for that? And even if at one point someone coyly utters the catchphrase, “You sunk my Battleship!” isn’t that a pop-culture reference that could have been made without paying millions in rights fees?

TOY COMPANY EXECUTIVES: [whispering, in unison] Yo, shut up, man. They can, like, hear you.

With Candy Land finally out of its system, here’s hoping Universal will recover from its insulin shock soon and get back to making the meat-and-potatoes entertainment that made it great all those years ago, and only fitfully brilliant of late.

UNIVERSAL EXECUTIVE: [signs 35 picture deal with Mattel]

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