With Battleship set to open on May 18, it would seem that Universal is full steam ahead (*tugboat horn*) with the threat of producing a series of films based on Hasbro games. However, as we learned last year, the threat is dying. First, Universal killed Clue in the board room with the red pen, and then the studio gently pushed its McG-helmed Ouija Board movie into the dumpster.

Now, as if the gods have heard our cries for salvation, Universal has also dropped its Stretch Armstrong movie that was not only going to be in 3D, but would have starred Taylor Lautner. That’s right, it was the perfect storm of elastic crap.

So why the toe tag, Universal?

The Tay-Tay camp is claiming “it was our choice” to pull out of the film, but in fact a project insider told Deadline months ago right after Lautner’s Lionsgate film Abduction bombed that the studio was rethinking the project with Lautner as star but that Hasbro would make the final decision on the status of the project. Looks like that has happened. (Via Deadline)

First of all, Tay-Tay? That’s just asinine. No grown adult covering any topic should ever refer to someone as Tay-Tay unless it’s a panda baby.

As for the film, we can’t get too excited. Relativity Media is cleaning up Universal’s sloppy seconds by teaming with Hasbro to get this movie done. The good thing is that it won’t star Lautner and maybe Universal has learned a very important lesson here.

Battleship is rumored to have cost Universal $200 million to produce, and if that’s true, the producers of Water World must be celebrating right now. There should be no way in hell that a film starring Liam Neeson and Rihanna could make that kind of money back, but stranger things have happened. Either way, this is a nice moral victory.

Let’s all enjoy it for now, until Boo Boo Stewart is cast as the lead in Slinky.

Battleship (with its rumored $200 million budget) doesn’t open for almost another year (May 2012), and already the other BOARD GAME ADAPTATIONS (I still can’t f*cking believe I’m typing that phrase) are dropping like flies. Three weeks ago, Universal dropped its plan to remake/adapt Clue, and now they’ve dropped the Ouija board movie set to be produced by Michael Bay and directed by McG. Why, it’s almost as if someone at Universal actually heard the words “an Ouija board movie directed by McG.”

The project had been set up at the studio since 2008, when Universal signed a rather aggressive deal with the world’s second-largest toymaker to develop Hasbro and Milton Bradley properties like Candy Land, Stretch Armstrong, Battleship, and Ouija into film titles. Most recently, screenwriter Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) had taken a pass at the Ouija script under the supervision of McG, who envisioned it as a big-budget Jumanji-like family fantasy, but apparently to no avail.

So strange that they wouldn’t want it. I mean, what better purpose could movies serve than to resurrect dead children’s toys? “This summer, from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan… POGS… in 3D!”

Insiders say that Bay and McG are taking meetings with other studios next week to drum up interest. (Paramount Pictures, with whom producer Bay has an obvious longstanding relationship from directing Hasbro’s Transformers franchise, is said to have passed on taking over the project.)

Assuming it ever does get made (it won’t), I can’t wait for the inevitable Entertainment Weekly cover story about what heroes McG and Michael Bay are for putting aside greed to make the two-hour toy commercial they always believed in.
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*puts finger tips on Ouija Board planchette*

Oh spirits of the deep, dark void… I beckon you! Tell me, ghosts of another world, does Hollywood have anything mind-numbingly retarded in the works this week?

Evan Spiliotopoulos, best known for penning a slew of high-profile, straight-to-DVD Disney animated pics, has been tapped to work on Ouija for Universal and Michael Bay’s production banner Platinum Dunes.

McG is directing the movie, which is an adaptation of the Hasbro board game about conjuring up spirits of the dead. (Via The Hollywood Reporter)

That’s right, folks – a Ouija Board movie being produced by Michael Bay and directed by McG, who is a grown adult and still goes by a childhood nickname. Even better, the new writer with the really long name is the guy who brought us such classics as The Lion King 1 ½, Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie, and Wanted 2, which will probably never happen because Angeline Jolie thinks it’s stupid. Even better, Spiliotopoulos is working on the script that was originally written by the guys who wrote Tron: Legacy, and they’ve already washed their hands of this awful idea.

As for the brain trust behind Ouija, I’m assuming the following conversation took place…

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In the build-up to Terminator Salvation, McG was saying all the right things (actual quote: “It’s going to knock your f*ckin balls up your ass”).  He acknowledged that most people probably thought of him as the Charlie’s Angels guy, and the self-awareness he demonstrated almost had us believing that he was more than a one-named douche who used to direct Korn videos.  At least, until we actually saw the movie.  Fast-forward to today, and he’s through pretending to be more than a paycheck director.  A 90-minute commercial for a board game?  Long as the check clears, homey.

McG is the choice to direct Ouija, the Universal Pictures supernatural action adventure that will follow Battleship as the next Hasbro branded property to move into production. Scripted by Tron: Legacy writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, the film is being produced by Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir along with Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form. Production will begin by the summer, for release November 12, 2012. McG’s about to begin negotiations.

The big-scale movie has had directors circling it since October, after Universal  moved back the Rob Letterman-directed Taylor Lautner-attached Stretch Armstrong‘s start date, making Ouija the next Hasbro pic to follow Battleship, which opens May 18, 2012.

McG is in post-production on the Fox comedy This Means War, which stars Tom Hardy, Reese Witherspoon and Chris Pine. |Deadline|

That’s right, Hollywood has doubled down on board game movies, all based on the idea that because Transformers was a hit, and it was based on a toy, than why not other toy movies?  Fool proof logic!!  QUICK, GET ME A SCRIPT FOR ‘TOASTER’, THE NAME RECOGNITION IS OFF THE CHARTS!  It’s sad that it’ll just be the companies’ stock prices that take the hit, because everyone named in this story deserves to lose a million dollars each.

You have to feel sorry for the “high-level writer” whom Platinum Dunes producer Brad Fuller claims to be hiring for his upcoming Ouija Board movie.  No, you read that right, the concept of the movie is a f-cking board game.

Fuller added that the movie will be “a huge movie. That’s a big, big, big thing. … It’s more of a, like, Pirates of the Caribbean adventure story, with a Ouija board at the center of it.”

The movie is being developed at Universal as part of Platinum Dunes partner Michael Bay’s relationship with Hasbro (Transformers), which owns Parker Brothers. Fuller added that the movie will NOT resemble Jumanji, another game-themed movie. [SciFiWire]

Hold on.. I think it’s spelling something… P A R K O U R… R O B O T S… H I P H O P D A N C E C R E W… yup, this is gonna suck.