Soon it will be spring, when a young producer’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of film adaptations of existing properties. No doubt frustrated that Universal has already snapped up the rights to such story-rich Hasbro games as Monopoly and Candy Land—along with the already-produced (and tremendously successful) movie version of Battleship and Ouija—producer Gail Katz has been forced to settle for a game that actually has some vague semblance of plot. Despite being saddled with the inconvenience of an actual pre-existing narrative of sorts, Deadline reports that the producer of The Perfect Storm and Air Force One has acquired the film and televison rights to Settlers Of Catan, the bestselling multiplayer strategy game.
Created by Klaus Teuber, Settlers Of Catan involves creating a society on the fictional island of Catan while fending off territorial threats and struggles over resources posed by other players. More than 20 million copies of the board game version have been sold in 30 languages and 50 countries, while the digital version of the game has been downloaded 1.6 billion times. That’s a disturbingly large number, implying that a good portion of the populace walks around unaware that their fellow citizens are secretly unite, via an enormous The Puppet Masters-style collective experience which will eventually spread like an alien parasite to the rest of us. Unless we’re just pretending we haven’t played it—who can you trust?
There is no deal in place yet to begin production, presumably because Katz is still rolling the die, frantically trying to collect the right resources to solidify her empire. We’re not trying to tell her how to plan her strategy, but perhaps it’s time to buy a development card or two. Wait—we’ve said too much.