20th Century Fox will remake Hasbro’s board game, “Clue”

20th Century Fox has picked up the rights to remake “Clue”, the classic Hasbro board game, after it had been dropped Universal Studios.

Josh Feldman, the head of Hasbro’s TV and film division, is producing for Hasbro Studios. Daria Cercek is overseeing for Fox.

Hasbro launched development of a “Clue” movie in 2008 as part of a six-year partnership with Universal to produce at least four feature films based on branded properties: Clue, Monopoly, Candyland, Ouija, Battleship, Magic: The Gathering and Stretch Armstrong.

Feldman, who previously worked for Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films before being tapped to head up Hasbro’s TV and film division, has greatly expanded the iconic toy company’s footprint in Hollywood since his tenure began in 2014. In addition to Clue, Hasbro’s development board also includes adaptations of Monopoly, Risk, and Candy Land, not to mention the ever-expanding Transformers universe at Paramount, another G.I. Joe sequel in the works, and multiple series on the TV side.

Battleship was a costly money-loser for the studio in 2012 while Ouija grossed $103 million on a $5 million budget and generated a sequel Ouija: Origin of Evil that’s due out Oct. 21. At the time that Universal dropped the “Clue” project, Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski was attached to direct and produce, but is no longer part of the project at Fox.

Hasbro’s seen its greatest success in Hollywood with Ouija, and at Paramount with the four “Transformers” movie and two “G.I. Joe” films.

Paramount developed a 1985 movie based on the board game,  written by John Landis and directed by Jonathan Lynn, saw Tim Curry lead a colorful cast of characters based on those featured in the game – Mrs. Peacock, Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard – as they’re invited into a strange house and must cooperate with the staff to solve a murder mystery. The movie co-starred Eileen Brennan, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, Martin Mull and Lesley Ann Warren.The film was not a major success, grossing less $15 million. However, it has gained cult classic status over the years. One reason is that when the filmed aired on cable TV, they streamlined all 3 endings together, with title cards “That’s how it could have happened. But how about this?”, and “But here’s what really happened.”

So far, so good. Or at least so meh. Here’s the bad news: We are hearing, however, that there’s a desire to move the story out of the parlor and make it a game of “worldwide mystery” with action-adventure elements, potentially setting up a possible franchise that could play well internationally.

I was going to initially say, “The less said about the two VCR games, the better.” But Fox really does want to remake Clue in the style of the 2nd VCR Game, “Murder in Disguise.”

We might really get to see Miss Peach, Monsieur Brunette, Madame Rose and Sgt Gray on the big screen.