Sometime back before Battleship sank to the bottom of the deep ocean, we wrote a number of reports for TG about Hasbro’s deal with Universal to make a bunch of movies out of video games.
Yet before Battleship even hit theaters, the potentially lucrative deal was terminated, leaving a number of properties to try and find other studio homes.
One of these properties was Ouija, which was originally going to be a big budget horror adventure, like Jumanji, and then got reportedly downscaled to a $5 million budget range, a la Paranormal Activity.
Now according to sciencefiction.com, Ouija has a new writing team, and it’s Juliet Sownden and Stiles White, who also wrote Knowing, Boogeyman, and the Possession. (They’re also reportedly working on a remake of Poltergeist.)
As often happens in Hollywood, there’s been a big screenwriter’s square dance with a bunch of writers changing partners back and forth. There was a script by another team, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horwitz, who worked on Lost, Once Upon a Time, and co-wrote Tron: Uprising. Then it looked like McG was going to direct, then Paramount put the movie in turnaround.
Then there was a studio square dance with the project going back to Universal, again with a much smaller budget. The current screenwriting duo of Snowden and White are also on board to direct the film as well. Michael Bay’s company, Platinum Dunes, who’ve spearheaded many of the current big horror remakes, is producing, and Ouija is slated to be in theaters some time next year.
So could a movie centered around a ouija board make for an interesting horror film? With the right approach, why not? Doesn’t have to be big budget either, and always remember that it was a ouija board in The Exorcist that opened the door for Linda Blair to be possessed when she was contacting her friend “Captain Howdy.”
