LOS ANGELES —
“Battleship” steams into movie theaters overseas this week, giving international audiences the first chance to decide whether a board-game-based movie is seaworthy.
The Hasbro Inc. search-and-destroy game was once a way for kids to while away a summer afternoon. But as it debuts in Europe on Wednesday, the movie version has become a potential franchise, sporting Michael Bay-inspired special effects, aliens invading Earth, a bikini-model actress, superstar Rihanna and, of course, lots of guns.
Whether the movie symbolizes Hollywood’s lack of new ideas or its brilliance in adapting old ones, Comcast Corp.’s Universal Pictures is betting big that it’s the latter. With a reported production budget of $200 million, observers say it will need to reap at least $500 million at box offices worldwide to pay off.
Hollywood’s love of the sequel, the prequel, the reboot and the adapted novel all originate from the same premise: Moviegoers are more likely to buy a ticket if they are already familiar with the story.
But not since “Clue” bombed in 1985 has Tinseltown gambled on adapting a popular board game with no apparent storyline.
The idea of turning board games into movies has gained new traction in part because of the huge success of “Transformers” and, to a lesser extent, “G.I. Joe,” which are both based on toys from toymaker Hasbro Inc. The three “Transformers” movies have grossed more than $2.6 billion worldwide, helping lift “Transformers” toys to become Hasbro’s top-selling brand last year, exceeding 11 percent of its $4.3 billion in annual revenue.
For Hasbro, movies are a way to get a globally marketed boost for its games business, which Sterne Agee analyst Margaret Whitfield called “stagnant” and lacking innovation. Turning that stagnation around is a goal of Brian Goldner, Hasbro’s chief executive since 2008.
If it succeeds, “Battleship” will be the advance guard of a whole fleet of planned adaptations of Hasbro games, including “Ouija,” also being developed by Universal for release in 2013, as well as “Risk” and “Candy Land,” which are both in the works at Sony Corp.
