Gallery: 10 Toy-Based Movies Ideas That Would Blow Away Battleship
01twister-2
Laugh all you want, but the stupendously silly, alien-riddled Battleship blockbuster isn't close to sinking toy- and game-based films anytime soon. Blowtastic auteur Michael Bay's repeatedly [juggled Ouija film](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/hasbros-ouija-movie-returns-universal-296839) is officially back on the board, and films based on Candy Land, Stretch Armstrong and other childhood diversions are following close behind. With that in mind (and *Battleship* opening Friday in the United States), we've assembled our own high-concept arsenal of toy- and game-based movies, in hopes of getting that lucrative Hollywood call. (Hey, [it happened to this guy](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2012/03/ff_reddit)!) Scan our similarly ludicrous electives in the gallery above, then let us know in the comments section below if you've got some game-based popcorn of your own to dish out. Bonus points go to anyone who can find the original commercial for [I Took a Lickin' From a Chicken](http://www.flickr.com/photos/hbomb/15345973). __Above:__ Movie Idea: [Twister](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(game)) ------------------------------------------------------------------ __Tagline:__ You can't resist the twist. __Elevator pitch:__ Extreme weather events get interactive in this sequel to the [1996 disaster film](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(1996_film)) of the same name. When a clumsy but hunky California scientist (played by Taylor Kitsch) finally gets close to consummating his cross-continental love interest with an icy-but-vulnerable D.C. politico (Scarlett Johansson), the audience steps in to disrupt their anticipated union. Engaging bleeding-edge 4-D technology, moviegoers place their hands and feet on holographic circles that scatter an array of death-bringing tornadoes -- and the film's frustrated lovers -- across America. Proprietary algorithms crunch the collective audience reaction into a stream of plot holes that painfully twist the thriller like the original game contorted bodies (and also computes whether Kitsch and Johansson grind at the climax). Games of Twister should fly off the shelves after the lights come up.
02connect-four
Movie Idea: [Connect Four](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_four) --------------------------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ Fear, diagonally. __Elevator pitch:__ Milton Bradley's abstract strategy game transforms into an apocalyptic race against time in this sci-fi blockbuster, starring Ryan Gosling and Rihanna as technocratic dictators (and ex-lovers) locked in a perpetual war of mutually assured destruction and reconstruction on the planet [Ouroboros](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros). After erecting, then annihilating, exquisite tech-noir skyscrapers and impossibly high vertical farms using strategically placed death discs, it is left to a brilliant but raunchy elderly mathematician (Betty White) to unite the ex-lovers with a perfect-play strategy inspired by James D. Allen and Victor Allis, who solved the game on Earth in the late '80s. Catchphrases from the game's TV commercial -- "Here, diagonally" and "Pretty sneaky, sis" -- are incorporated into the film's final moments, when the formerly self-centered Gosling asks the formerly obstinate Rihanna how she would like to be kissed.
03risk-2
Movie Idea: [Risk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(game)) ------------------------------------------------------------ __Tagline:__ This time, we'll (probably) win. __Elevator pitch:__ [Neoconservative politicians and disaster capitalists spread democracy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror) with drones in the sky and on the ground in this global war blockbuster, directed by Michael Bay. After a suspiciously originating terrorist attack annihilates every mall in America (also, the Federal Reserve), an aging crew of Beltway lifers, led by a cleverly cast Ted Nugent, gather the nation's dishonorably downsized armed forces and take the fight to the evil empires of China, Afghanistan, Russia and everywhere else on the map that isn't the United States in the classic Risk commercial above. Their mission is met with hardy resistance from socialists, communists, vegetarians, atheists and cat lovers based in Iceland and Greece, throwing the fate of civilization into question. Think Space Cowboys and World War Z, and you're there. *There* not being, of course, the [actual Risk-based blockbuster](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2009/11/risk-movie) Sony has had in development since 2009, or the viral YouTube hit in which a [frustrated Hitler loses his shit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZZsU7DF1c8&feature=related).
04stratego-2
Movie Idea: [Stratego](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratego) ------------------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ Capture the conflagration! __Elevator pitch:__ What happens when cyberscary hackers and al-Qaida arsonists team up to literally burn down Western civilization? Kiefer Sutherland and Justin Bieber get mad with game theory, right? (Really, seriously.) Robert Downey Jr. stars as a holographically resuscitated Osama bin Laden leading terrorist hordes that mercilessly intensify the American South's worsening droughts with strategically arranged death mirrors, and then blame climate change for it. But will a love triangle with Natalie Portman, which could itself be disinformation, complicate Sutherland and Bieber's quest to quench the fires? It's uncertain, but what's certain is that we're almost sure this film could be better in some measure than [Robot Chicken's Stratego spoof](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPGKOvFWzRk&feature=fvwrel).
05green-machine
Movie Idea: Green Machine ------------------------- __Tagline:__ It's better than Green Lantern and Green Hornet combined. __Elevator pitch:__ Destabilizing climate change and obsolete car culture collide in the streets and on the screen in this explosive race thriller, [very loosely based on a true story](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/autopia/2011/03/green-machine-bike-is-a-big-wheel-for-grownups). After a bumbling inventor (Taylor Lautner) creates Earth's first zero-emission perpetual motion machine -- ingeniously housed inside a fully loaded upgrade of his favorite toy bike from his distressed youth -- he takes to the overcrowded, gridlocked streets to win the favor of his hometown's utterly adorable environmental activist (Zooey Deschanel). But can he survive slews of death races, competing with Hummer limousines and other gas hogs as they speed across the warming planet's distressed territories, in time to create a fleet of spinoff jetpacks, hovercars and antigravity sneakers necessary for civilization to survive? Welcome to the machine.
06hungry-hungry-hippos
Movie Idea: [Hungry Hungry Hippos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Hungry_Hippos) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ Eat it, evil! __Elevator pitch:__ In a film brought to you from the minds behind the [Madagascar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_(2005_film)) franchise, Jada Pinkett reprises her role as Gloria the hippopotamus in this animated romp about mass extinction. When a sinister alien invasion deposits mysteriously addictive white balls across African rivers and mangrove swamps, it's left to Gloria to soldier forth to stop her fellow hippos from hungrily scarfing down the orbs and turning into hyperconsuming zombies. Can she reconcile with her old flame (Will Smith) in time to stop the cannibal contagion from spreading to the rest of Africa, and the world? Only with the help of an unorthodox matchmaker from the Pentagon (Tom Cruise), who abandons his initial mission to weaponize the extreme ends of the visual spectrum. (Note to Marketing: A candy tie-in with [Hershey's Milk Duds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_Duds) makes sense, provided they can be dyed white for the occasion.)
07nerf
Movie Idea: [Nerf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf) ----------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ The foam hits the fan. __Elevator pitch:__ What happens when Lord of the Flies meets Home Alone and [Bugsy Malone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Malone)? Nerf happens, that's what. When a mysterious disturbance in the space-time continuum makes all Earth's parents disappear (along with their myriad tools of destruction), it is left to warring child tribes to sort out sovereignty and power with their much-less-lethal weaponry, which includes the mythic [Nerf Crotch Bat](http://www.hulu.com/watch/292076/saturday-night-live-nerf-crotch-bat). The subsequently massive Nerf turf wars turn dangerous when the last adult on Earth (Neil Patrick Harris), left suspiciously behind, turns up to terrorize the kids with Tasers. Can the baby-faced insurrection rally around Hasbro's slogan ("It's Nerf or nothin!") to survive a still boyishly handsome madman married to electrocution? And what to make of the silently orbiting mothership, piloted by Peter Dinklage and Samuel L. Jackson, mysteriously watching it all from above?
08ball-buster
Movie Idea: [Ball Buster](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ball%20buster) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ Grow a pair, \[insert release date here\]! __Elevator pitch:__ Adorably smart [geek goddess Felicia Day](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2012/04/felicia-day-geek-sundry), in her most challenging role yet, stars in this gripping horror as an unlucky-in-love professional matchmaker who's transformed into a brutal avenger after catching her derivatives-trading love interest (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in bed with another woman. After ripping off his testicles with her bare hands, she's shocked to find copycat mutilations proliferating across the globe, carried out by perpetrators wearing Guy Fawkes-like masks with her face on them. Extremely, like tenuously, based on that story about [that lady](http://news.yahoo.com/angry-ex-girlfriend-goes-ballistic-rips-off-man-192805232.html) who reportedly did [that thing](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jan/12/2) to that guy's [real-life balls](http://current.com/community/91550464_woman-rips-out-cheating-mans-testicles.htm), Ball Buster is a violent thriller for fans of both Fatal Attraction and V for Vendetta. (Note to Legal: Make sure to file an injunction forbidding UNKLE from any further use of Ball Buster's commercial for [Psyence Fiction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyence_Fiction) interlude, "Getting Ahead in the Lucrative Field of Artist Management.")
09pong-2
Movie Idea: [Pong](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong) ----------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ Reaction time is a factor! __Elevator pitch:__ Atari's' timeless classic that created the videogame industry finally gets its blockbuster. But this time with more balls -- of death! When a smug, self-satisfied space-fleet admiral (that guy who plays Don Draper) is cuckolded by an unscrupulous interstellar pirate (Jane Lynch), bitter rivalries in the galaxy Pong explode into brutal warfare. Like the proposed film based on flexibility-testing game Twister, this blowout features bleeding-edge 4-D holographic technology, allowing the audience to participate in the carnage by firing and repelling glowing white balls of death at (supposedly) innocent metropoles throughout the galaxy. *Pong* ends when only the outer-body settlements are left standing, paving the way for Atari's sequel, [Asteroids](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)).
10view-master
Movie Idea: [View-Master](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_Master) ------------------------------------------------------------------- __Tagline:__ It's already watching you! __Elevator pitch:__ Put down that antidepressant and ponder this: What if we're all just holograms inside the universe's viewfinder? That's the astounding foundation of this buddy-cop blockbuster, based on a [Wired interview with theoretical physicist Brian Greene](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2012/05/geeks-guide-brian-greene), who stars as a space detective with a wisecracking cyborg sidekick ([Stephen Hawking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_hawking)) caught up in a web of existential intrigue. After accidentally falling into a black hole, Greene and Hawking discover that all of existence is an informational 3-D projection of a 2-D surface reality, and vow to hunt down the really bored godlike entity (Stephen Colbert) responsible for the [phenomenological madness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)). Star cameos from the timeless View-Master commercial above include Jodie Foster as a time-traveling scientist, The Brady Bunch's Christopher Knight as a lovable corporate middle manager and a holographic Henry Fonda as the wise, mysterious entity that saves the day. (Note to Legal: Confirm this original treatment is indemnified against lawsuits from Transformers and Fringe producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who once explained that their own [View-Master film "wasn't born in sin](http://blastr.com/2009/08/how-producers-defend-thei.php) ... it wasn't like, 'Let's come up with a View-Master movie.' There was a great idea out there, and it was perfect to marry with View-Master.'")
