In Hollywood, it's a much safer financial bet to adapt an already existing property into a movie rather than fund something original, which explains why we have gotten movies based on board games with little to no plot. Now we might be adding another film to the strange collection of board game movies.
According to Deadline, producer Gail Katz has purchased the TV and film rights to The Settlers of Catan. Katz has produced some major Hollywood films including The Perfect Storm and Air Force One.
Katz said that ever since her college-aged kids introduced her to the game, she's been wanting to adapt it on screen. She described Catan as a vivid, exciting world, and said there's plenty of opportunity to create a narrative based on the mythology of Catan.
The Settlers of Catan, released in 1995, is a game where players attempt to settle an uncharted island, competing with each other for resources and trading back and forth with their opponents. Players receive points based on their number of settlements, and the first player to reach a certain number of points wins.
It might sound silly, but Catan definitely isn't the most ridiculous board game to be discussed as a movie. The game at least creates this fictional world of Catan that could theoretically be expanded on in a movie, and there is some amount of mythology to it. Compare that to Battleship, a game with literally no plot but that was turned into a live action movie about alien invaders. The Battleship movie grossed $303 million worldwide, though it was somewhat of a disappointment domestically.
There's also a Monopoly movie in development, according to Slashfilm, another game with basically no plot. And though it's not a board game, let's not forget the upcoming Tetris movie, a game which is about as far removed from a story as you can possibly get.
Of course, board game movies don't always have to be bad. Clue, released in 1985, is probably one of the funniest movies ever, and that actually did basically follow the same premise of the game. At least the Clue board game has a decent set of characters though, as opposed to something like Tetris or Monopoly.
Who knows if we'll ever actually see The Settlers of Catan on the big or small screen, but one question we have to ask with some of these movies is that if they're going to have to invent so much plot that has nothing to do with the game, what is even the point of making it an adaptation anymore? Does Battleship really have to be based on the game when it has almost zero to do with it except that they both contain battleships? It's all about name recognition, and the idea that audiences will be more likely to see movies if they're somewhat familiar with the property as something that already exists. And based on the success of some of these movies over films not based on anything, it's hard to blame them.