The red and green people battle over world domination!
ComingSoon says that Sony Pictures has acquired the film rights to the board game Risk. Toymaker Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Bennett Schneir and Overbrook Entertainment’s James Lassiter will develop and produce the film. Of course there isn’t any director or stars attached yet.
Risk is the game of world domination. It was created in 1957 by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse and introduced in the US in 1959. It quickly became one of the best-selling board games in the world.
ComingSoon says that Risk was the first board game to offer nonlinear movement. Boardgamecentral calls it “the game of world domination” (which is also how Kramer and Newman describe it in the “Seinfeld” episode where they become obsessed with the game):
“…where the object is to conquer the world. To win, you must attack and defend – attacking to acquire territory, and defending to keep it from your opponents.
The game board features a map of six continents divided into 42 territories. It’s a game of strategy as you battle to win by launching daring attacks, defending your territory, and moving across continents with your cunning plan! Play three variations: World Domination, Capital Risk, and Secret Mission Risk. This game will engage and challenge any player to join the ranks of world leaders!
Needless to say, there’s also a video game version, as well as numerous versions set in alternate worlds: the Star Wars universe, Middle Earth, Narnia, etc.
Board games are indeed the latest hot source material in Hollywood; news about adaptations of board games have been outpacing news about graphic novel rights’ purchases, which was huge last year. As you can tell from the description, Risk has the setup that naturally fits the big screen. In fact, it’s so natural, that one would wonder what would make it any different from any other large scale, war, action movie? Probably not much–what Sony paid for is the familiarity that comes with the name, and studios always hope that familiarity will buy them an audience.
