Despite the fact that Transformers is the only toy movie that has come out and been a success, Hollywood is still going full steam ahead on this idea that toys or board games can be movies. (See also: Candyland, Monopoly, Oujia Board, Battleship, Bazooka Joe, View-Master, Stretch Armstrong, etc., etc.). I think this trend was something cooked up by the magic 8-ball, and I don’t mean the Magic 8-Ball toy they’re planning to turn into a movie.
The latest sign of the apocalypse is that Wham-O has signed with talent agency ICM. And still, your slutty sister toils in obscurity. It doesn’t seem fair.
Wham-O is the company that initially rode toy fads to success, introducing playthings such as the Frisbee, Hula Hoops and Super Ball to America in the buoyant 1950s and 1960s.
ICM will now look to package Wham-O’s unique products for movies, television, music and online content in the same vein as it did with Atari. So far, the agency has guided three Atari properties into the film realm: Asteroids at Universal, Rollercoaster Tycoon with Sony Pictures Animation and Missile Command at 20th Century Fox.
Equally as interesting are the toys and games that Wham-O developed but that never took off, such as a do-it-yourself bomb shelter (created during the time when backyard bomb shelters where de rigeur) and the “instant fish” idea that consisted of selling mud with eggs from a unique species of African fish (they wouldn’t mate in America). [THR]
Meanwhile, FilmDrunk was able to obtain this EXCLUSIVE copy of the treatment for HULA HOOP: THE MOVIE.