14 Movie Premises Based On Board Games

Hollywood should feel free to contact me about my writing credit. With movies based on Candyland, Battleship, Monopoly and even Ouija, Hollywood is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. So while they're down there, they might as well cash in on our nostalgia too. I took thirty minutes days out of my time to help them with these well thought out and plot-hole proof concepts.

1. Don't Break The Ice

Traveling across the frozen tundra towards the North Pole, an intrepid group of adventurers make a hole in the ice to fish. Only they pull up the remains of a human instead of a meal. It appears to have been partially eaten. Polar bears? Nope. A frantic dash across the darkened ice ensues as a large alien creature stalks them, occasionally sprouting from beneath the water to drag one of them to their death.

2. Memory

A man awakens in a house with no memory of how he got there or who he is. All windows are boarded up and the outside doors are locked. Wandering from room to room, he starts to see flashes in his mind...a rocking horse, a wormy apple, a model airplane...and eventually matches them to objects in the house. Only when he pieces everything together does his Memory (oho!) become clear. He is haunting the house that he committed suicide in after the accidental death of his wife and son.

3. Perfection

A math thriller. A ticking bomb is set up somewhere in the city, set to go off at a certain time. But the police don't know when or where because the terrorist/psycho has used a geometry algorithm. The daughter of the police chief brings in her wrong-side-of-the-tracks with a heart of gold boyfriend in and says he can crack the case. The chief is unimpressed and sends him on his way. Cue montage of the young couple racing across the city to pick up clues and unravel the mystery just in time to save the day.

4. The Grape Escape

An animated film about a clump of grapes living on a vine in the country. Some wish for the big city life and some are content. Until the day that they're harvested and separated at the jam plant. The main grape is determined to save his friends and escape from the portly and beady-eyed plant overseer that keeps catching them and putting them back on the line.

5. Don't Wake Daddy

A stark and realistic look at what happens to a family dynamic when the father is an abusive alcoholic. Determined to do well and get out of the cycle of abuse, two siblings spend their nights studying for the acceptance test to a prestigious boarding school that only accepts a handful of qualified scholarship students a year. Worried that only one will be accepted, racked with guilt at abandoning their mother and avoiding the blows from their father, they still never give up hope.

6. 13 Dead End Drive

A group of friends and family meet at the mansion of their deceased old Grandma to squabble over the will like so many vultures. As the bickering grows, people start dying in horrible and spectacular ways. Everyone is a suspect and tensions rise. Only in the end it turns out to be the vengeful spirit or the old woman, killing her ungrateful family save for the one kid/teen/favorite who walks away with a fortune...only to be arrested for murder because the cops don't believe them. Dun dun duuuuun.

7. Guess Who?

A romantic comedy of errors. Several converging story lines about people looking for love on Craigslist. Without photographs, each person is forced to find their "date" based on description alone, leading to all sort of misadventures and gender confusion.

8. Mall Madness

There are actually two options here.

Option One: A light-hearted comedy about four teenage girls and their quest to makeover the "ugly" chick that works in the food court. Many hi-jinks, including swiping their parents' credit cards ensue. Mean girls get their comeuppance and "ugly" chick gets the guy.

Option B: Beginning is the same as A but instead of hi-jinks, a zombie outbreak in the mall causes these girls to ban together for survival. Trying on clothes montage is for tactical gear instead of prom dresses. Shaun of the Dead for the ladies.

9. Hungry Hungry Hippos

On an expedition in Africa, a journalist and her crew are cut off from civilization during a monsoon. One of them clumsily drops and breaks the waterproof GPS and they are forced to walk blindly in the direction they think is town. But then, the hippos are upon them. Enraged and rotting, these creatures maim and kill without discretion. The journalist ends up taking refuge in an abandoned warehouse where she learns that pharmaceutical companies were testing vaccines on various animals and accidentally created these undead hippos.

10. Go To The Head Of The Class

One character has always been the smartest one in the class. Until the day the new kid shows up and bumps him from the head of the class. A slowly snowballing one-upmanship begins, culminating with everyone learning a lesson about sharing the spotlight.

11. Simon

In the futuristic city of Simon, the four districts take turns having governmental control, with the power balance shifting every three years. Only this time, the red sector has decided it knows better than green, yellow or blue. When the other three parts of Simon band together to take back the city it is revealed that none of the sectors was truly the power in charge after all. Turns out, S.I.M.O.N. an advanced A.I. has been pulling the strings all along, and has decided to "reign" from the red sector. Benevolent or nefarious computer overlord? Will the humans be able to take control of their city again?

12. Shark Attack

Another animated film about a group of fish. They live in part of the ocean where the Sharks are Kings. They bully the other fish and tell them where to go and what to do. But when the smallest of the fish friends saves a baby shark from a fisherman's net, a journey of self-discovery and learning to accept people for who they are begins.

13. Operation

A brilliant but down on her luck surgeon loses her medical license after a patient dies on the table due to her negligence/hangover. Several years later, a former colleague approaches her with a chart. A patient has come in with an extremely aggressive and unusual tumor and only she has the skill to remove it all. All other specialists have told this patient he has months to live. But the colleague can't watch his own father die a slow painful death. Without her license or her confidence, will the doctor be able to save him?

14. Crossfire!

Honestly? Just take this commercial and make it into a movie.