Of all the board games of years gone past, the nerdiest and most time consuming one has to be Risk. Released in the 1950’s, it pitted players against each other in the pursuit of world domination and wouldn’t end until one person controlled the entire board. Depending on how many friends you had, this could take forever. Case in point: the one time I tried to play the game, it ended up stretching over three days before I just said to hell with it and flipped the board, effectively ending everything in an instant. Sometimes taking the sitcom way out of life is the only way to go.
But even though it’s not my cup of tea, Risk continues to prosper and to the best of my knowledge is one of the few board games people still actually play (the other being Monopoly). And given Hollywood’s hard-on with adapting anything in hopes it’ll make tons of money, you know where this story ends up: ADAPTATION. Columbia Pictures is currently working on one for Risk and according to THR, they have found their writer. John Hlavin, who served as story editor and writer for the FX show The Shield, is the man the studio has picked. And although Risk has been released for every conceivable era, from the Cold War to the future, this one will take place in modern times and involve the whole world.
I have a hunch many who have written about this news have already said this, but making a war movie and slapping the Risk name on it is nothing more than using the brand to create awareness. Considering Risk lacks an actual narrative, it really couldn’t be anything else. Personally I think it would be ballsier to create a movie called Risk where it revolves around people actually playing the game but why do that when you can just use the name to sell some generic war flick? What’s next, making a Battleship movie where it’s about an alien invasion? Who would be stupid enough to…oh right. Sigh.
Does calling a movie about war Risk make you want to see it more or are studios really underestimating audience intelligence?