Did you ever walk past the toy aisle at a store and wonder, “when are they going to make a movie about Play-Doh? That stuff was awesome.” Well wonder no more because the fine folks at Hasbro and 20th Century Fox are doing just that. As part of Hasbro’s magical film realignment, Play-Doh is getting the call to the big screen.
Coupled with this news is the announcement that a big name is attached to direct — Paul Feig. He’ll be joined by Jason Micallef on the script and they’ll both try to figure out a way to bring the kid’s favorite to life.
Feig is obviously all over the place right now thanks to his role in the Ghostbusters reboot, but he can now add Play-Doh to the mix. From Deadline:
Feig, coming off the Melissa McCarthy-Sandra Bullock comedy Heat, is prepping to release the Fox comedy Spy and he’ll next direct a new Ghostbusters at Sony with Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon. Hasbro approach Feig and Chernin and they spent a long time coming up with a take for a feature, and then turned Micallef loose on the script.
Now Deadline goes on to try and compare this prospective film to another kid’s toy turned big screen feature — The Lego Movie. I’ll let you read their thoughts before I give mine:
Before you start writing a catty comment about how Play-Doh isn’t a movie and Hollywood has run out of ideas, remember it’s the same one you wrote when Warner Bros began planning movies based on LEGO. There, the talented team of Phil Lord & Christopher Miller found a disruptive movie in those building blocks that cost $60 million, grossed $658 million worldwide, and hatched not only a sequel but spinoffs.
Now, comparing this to The Lego Movie is essentially like comparing apples to a clump of clay-like sh*t that’s supposed to be an apple. Lego had an image that was conducive for a big screen movie. There’s tie-in branding, a universe, and the product has a firm direction on how you can mess around with it. Play-Doh is literally colored “doh” that you play with. Imagination plays a key here, but I get the feeling that the end game leads to it ending up in your stomach. It’s the same thing they’ll say about the eventual porn parody.
The positive side to this is that now we might get some very angry and confused philosophy students complaining online. They could use the attention, even if it’s a reach.
(Via Deadline)
