Seven out of the ten movies topping the
U.S. domestic charts for this very year are films based on established brand names;
Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, Twilight: Eclipse, Shrek Forever After, The Karate Kid, Clash of the Titans.
All those movies are either adaptations of well established source material, are franchise films or remakes of something that has been successful before. Somewhere in the last decade film studio's got the idea that nostalgia is what audiences want (hey, and maybe they were right?) and a property Joe Popcorn could recognise as familiar now has more drawing power than something that is new and risky. Which is why every popular website, board game, decades old t.v. shows, comic book franchises, video games, long forgotten novels and anything under the sun that is a brand name are being worked on as potential movies somewhere out there in Hollywood land. Curiously, the board game industry is the most in-development with films based on
Monopoly, Stretch Armstrong,
Candy Land and so many more potentially on the horizon, and one even well into production right now with the $200 million
Battleship film that's due in 2012. But
this latest announcement is probably the culmination of what we have been heading towards...
Talent agency CAA are shopping the film rights to the
Rubik's Cube puzzle around town and movie studio's are now trying to figure out how to make a plot out of a cube box - a task that is probably more complex than solving the rubik's cube itself. Is a film adaptation a good idea? Probably not... but at least a Rubik's Cube film gives the screenwriters enough freedom to make the movie have any kind of genre elements they desire, as presumably the only studio notes attached will be - "it has to have a Rubik's Cube key to the plot... apart from that, knock yourselves out". And if you really, really, really think about it...
Hellraiser is a pretty good idea of what a Rubik's Cube movie COULD be like if they put their mind to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAx34IZ8bTk