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.

Stretch Armstrong is SO not impressed with the Human Torch's flaming ability

Well this is some shocking news.  When the studio hired Steve Oedekerk (Evan Almighty, Barnyard, Patch Adams) to write their Taylor Lautner-starring Stretch Armstrong 3D movie, I naturally assumed he’d be the last writer they’d ever need.  I mean, come on, Evan Almighty!  Bizarrely, they felt a rewrite of Oedekerk’s script was in order, so they hired Forgetting Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller.  They also hired Monsters Vs. Aliens director Rob Letterman (who’s currently working with Stoller on Gulliver’s Travels) to direct.  Brian Grazer will produce, along with Dickensian villains Brian Goldner and Bennet Schneir from Hasbro.

I don’t know what the hell Nick Stoller is doing rewriting a Stretch Armstrong movie starring Taylor Lautner, but hey, it’s a paycheck, I guess.  I supposed I’d liken the writer of Stretch Armstrong to the person you’d hire to scrub semen off the booths at a peep show.  At the beginning, you hire some retarded kid, someone who doesn’t know any better, to soak up those really big, encrusted glops of jizz (the retarded jizz-glop-soaker in Stretch Armstrong‘s case being Steve Oedekerk). Once that part’s done, say you want to sell the place or whatever, then you can spend a little more money on a professional detailer like Nick Stoller.  He’s probably still gonna get a little spunk residue on his sponge (unless you found a really good retard, like a hybrid autistic retard, say), and it’s not something he’ll want to put on his resume… But hey, the economy, am I right?

[via ComingSoon]

Man, the execs who thought this one up deserved to be held down while we all line up to hit them with socks filled with dog poop.  Universal has officially announced that Taylor Lautner will star in Stretch Armstrong 3D.  He’ll play “uptight spy who stumbles across a stretching formula, which he takes and must now adjust to in everyday life and when fighting crime.”  In a script from Steve Oedekerk.  Great, I’m gonna have to throw away this computer after typing that.

“In the past two years, Taylor has emerged as a real star at the global box office. He brings the perfect balance of energy and athleticism to the role of an unlikely super hero with a fantastic super power,” said Universal co-chairman Donna Langley. [THR]

Keep in mind, Taylor Lautner’s global box office stardom is based on his role in Twilight, which had a built-in audience and required him to do nothing but stand around with his shirt off.  Meanwhile, Steve Oedekerk’s last script was for Evan Almighty, which earned $75 million less than its budget, domestically.  Hey, investors, I hope that stretching formula works on your butthole.

Collider recently got the chance to talk to Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner, the guy behind the idea to make movies out of boardgames. Put on your helmets, because it’s about to get stupid.  (*record scratch*)

“’Candy Land’ is not just about the board game.  If you really think about it, it’s an adventure that a kid goes on with his parents when they go across that board.”

F-ck yourself.

“’Monopoly’ has this wonderful history.  If you’ll remember, “Monopoly” was literally invented at The [Great] Depression, so that idea, this fiction that’s really there, this non-fiction fiction that’s really there in the game and in the fact that there’s such great roots to this brand and the history of the brand, we bring this to life with a story about families.”

F-ck yourself.

“Well Ridley did have an idea.  He grew up on “Monopoly” over in the UK and “Monopoly” is a brand that’s all over the world.  But for Ridley, he’s always been a guy that’s created these great big worlds and so for us, “Monopoly” is this great big world that will look like our world but of course there are certain things about it that make it uniquely a “Monopoly” kind-of-world.”

F-ck yourself.

“Oh, I’m not going to tell you quite yet but I will say that it’s everything you could imagine in a “Battleship” movie.  It’s really a phenomenal idea.” [via Collider, who also has the video]

The man is a geyser of stupid.

I’m doing all I can to bring shame and humiliation to anyone who participates in this retarded campaign by Hasbro to make movies out of all their dumb toys, but alas, I’m only one man with a laptop and poop-stained underpants, and Hollywood people are giant whores.  The latest to prove he has no shame is super producer/dude-with-weird-hair Brian Grazer, who has signed on to produce Stretch Armstrong, which is being written by paragon of mediocrity Steve Oedekerk.

Universal also slotted “Armstrong” for release April 15, 2011, making it the first movie to be given the green light under the studio and toy company’s six-year strategic partnership.
“Stretch is an unconventional kind of superhero with a power that no one would want,” Grazer said. “It’s a story about a guy stretching, if you will, the limits of what is possible to become all that he can be.”

It’s a metaphor for the two thumbs I just jammed up my asshole, you see.