‘Risk,’ Inevitably, Being Made Into a Movie

You are John Hlavin. Your career has taken off in the last two years, starting out as a writer on "The Shield" and writing one of those fun one-page screenplays for Movieline before taking off with Black List script "The Gunslinger" and some sort of Sam Raimi project he'll never get around to making. You've done well yourself. But until today, you had no idea your career was leading up to one moment. You are the man to make a movie out of the game Risk.

Yes, the board game that you and your fellow nerd friends played in the den while your sister made so much noise in the next room is being made into a movie, and Hlavin is the man writing it.

Columbia Pictures is developing an action thriller based on the Cold
War-era strategy game, in which players form armies and use them to
attack the territories belonging to other players, and the studio is
hiring Hlavin to pen the adaptation. The game, now owned by Hasbro (also
home of Transformers and G.I. Joe--both at Paramount), was launched in the 1950s by French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse (The Red Balloon). The typically hours-long game often becomes intense enough to spark conflict among the players.

OK, we had no idea that the guy who did "The Red Balloon" invented Risk. That's not a bad life that guy lived. (Though our favorite war game was invented by a French guy. Who knew?)

Of all the board games to be made into movies, you'd have to think Risk makes the most sense: You can turn it into a global "Bourne"-like thriller with minimal effort, one would think. Though you have to account for the soundtrack to be written by Rush. We always associate the people who played Risk all the time in high school with the people who listened to Rush all the time. That makes sense, right?

'Risk' Feature Film Adaptation Lands Writer [The Hollywood Reporter]