The game is afoot once again, dear reade—err, uh. Sorry. Wrong mystery franchise.
Anyway. So apparently Clue is in development over at 20th Century Fox, who have teamed up with Hasbro, the toy company that gave us the Battleship and Ouija movies. Oh, boy.
Yes, I’m pretty sure they’re all fully aware that there already has been a Clue movie. You know, the one starring the inimitable Tim Curry as the Butler? The one that you and your friends just couldn’t stop quoting for years after it came out? The one you likely quoted sometime this year? Yeah, that’s the one.
This news comes from The Tracking Board, who also said that Josh Feldman would be producing for Hasbro. Feldman served as director of development at Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films where he worked on X-Men: Apocalypse and Fantastic Four before signing on with Hasbro. Though details about cast and directorial crew remain scarce, back in 2011, when rumors of this remake first started surfacing, Gore Verbinski was slated to direct. There’s no word yet on whether he’s still in or not.
Now, I’m not saying directors’ past works are indicative of what they’ll do in the future, but if Verbinski is still attached, his work on both Pirates of the Carribbean and the surprisingly funny Rango could bode fairly well for what would hopefully be a fairly comedic movie. As well, we can’t deny that his latest released flick, The Lone Ranger, was pretty darn problematic for its portrayal of the iconic Native American character Tonto. Maybe hiring Johnny Depp to play that role wasn’t the best idea.
Generally speaking, I hope the movie stays true to its comedic roots, as I don’t know if the world wants a “gritty, grimdark” Clue movie. I daresay it doesn’t.
Generally speaking, I hope the movie can overcome its comedic roots, perhaps lending a more nuanced look at the mystery genre. I’m not sure the world wants a “gritty, grimdark” Clue movie, but I think in today’s Sherlock/Elementary world, it would perhaps do to have a mystery movie that can send up classic mystery tropes much in the same way Scream did when it turned a lot of horror movie tropes on their heads.
Generally speaking, Hasbro’s track record hasn’t been the best when it comes to putting big name toy franchises on the big screen. Battleship and Ouija remain two notorious examples of what can indeed go wrong when a company wants to make that elusive jump. But, on the other hand, it’s important to acknowledge that for every Battleship we have a Transformers, and for every Ouija we have a G.I. Joe. The two more successful counterpart franchises maybe aren’t the finest specimens of cinema, but they’re plenty successful in terms of financial gain. At the end of the day, that is indeed exactly what this all is: a business deal.
You said it, Wadsworth.
(via Vulture)
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