Sony has has acquired the big screen rights to board game Risk. The toy giant Hasbo are co-producing. The success of Transformers (also a Hasbro product) has been the driving force bringing Risk and other toy/board games to the big screen. We’ve also got Monopoly and Battleship films to look forward to as well as sequels to G.I. Joe and Transformers. I can barely contain my excitement.

The president of Columbia (not the country) reckons -

“The strategic thinking and the tactical gambles that players must take in the game are what make Risk a classic, thoroughly engaging game. Those elements translated into an action-packed, thrilling story are what will make this a uniquely exciting movie.”

I feel it is an appropriate time to quote the words of Theoden of Rohan, “How did it come to this?”. Have studios really hit the point where literally anything will be considered good source material for a film, ironically, in order to avoid taking a risk? Ok, so this is one of the slightly more promising of the board game-screen conversions because they can pretty much do anything with it as long as it has some large scale battles. But seriously, this drought of creativity has got to end.

Watchmen creator Alan Moore once made this prediction regarding the future of Hollywood cinema -

So often any film that comes out is going to be a sequel or a remake of a film that’s previously existed — and I’ve said this before, that we will see Johnny Depp playing Cap’n Crunch. It will eventually get down to breakfast cereal mascots.

How long will it be until studios turn to breakfast cereals for inspiration? is a Johnny Depp Cap’n Crunch just around the corner or maybe Colin Farrell in a Lucky Charms adaptation?

Sources: Variety, EW