We first reported on a film version of Privateer Press’ city-smashing board game Monsterpocalypse back in 2010, when a young up-and-comer by the name of Tim Burton was attached to direct. Now, six years later, Monsterpocalypse is back in the news, with Warner Bros. in talks to pick up the rare board-game-to-movie adaptation that doesn’t sound like a recipe for hot garbage soup, if only because its “giant monsters punching each other” source material was already lifting liberally from the venerated kaiju canon.
That’s the good news. The bad news—because even if he’s more miss than hit these days, we still want to see him make a giant lizard bodyslam a massive ape into a garishly colored UFO—is that Burton’s no longer attached, having been replaced on the project by horror director Fede Alvarez. Best known for the 2013 Evil Dead remake, Alvarez does have some experience in the world of larger-than-life violence; you can watch his 2009 short Panic Attack, in which giant robots lay waste to Montevideo, Uruguay, on YouTube right now.
Based around two kaiju battling it out on a big board until one of them drops, Monsterpocalypse doesn’t really have much of a plot, beyond “giant thing hits other, equally giant thing.” But hey, that’s pretty much the plot of Pacific Rim (or any given boxing movie), so it’s not like a simple premise is going to disqualify it for success—at least, if Alvarez can get his titanic combatants looking good.