It’s pretty clear that the recession finally hit Hollywood in mid-2011. In the last few months we’ve seen Disney shut down its production of a major tentpole film, Lone Ranger, for a ballooning budget (the film made it back into production after numerous cuts) and the outright cancellation of Paradise Lost for its likewise escalating budget. On the other side of the spectrum, 2012 has proven to studios that lower budget films, like The Devil Inside, Chronicle, and Project X, can turn a handsome profit (even if the movies aren’t particularly good). Obviously Hollywood is much more agreeable to the low-budget latter, even if most moviegoers would argue that the essential problem is that they need to make better movies (but that’s another article).
So it wasn’t much of a surprise when Universal announced it was cancelling its film based on the Hasbro board game Ouija — you remember, the board game that turned every party into a Psychic Friends meeting — because of its $100 million budget. It was even rumored that McG was involved and that the film would be a live-action family adventure film, not unlike Jumanji.
But according to Deadline, not only in the project back on board (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) at Universal, it has been scaled back to a $5 million budget and a new producer, Jason Blum and his Blumhouse Productions, is joining the project. Blum is best as the producer behind the Paranormal Activity movies, which have been made for $5 million or less. So it’s likely that the Ouija movie will be taken in more of a horror direction (which, frankly, seems to me like the one way to do a film based on Ouija… but I’m no Hollywood executive, I guess).
Hasbro Films has Battleship and G.I. Joe: Retaliation coming up in 2012. I can’t wait for the inevitable Jenga movie!
Recent Comments