Waldo, the red-and-white-striped adventurer created by Martin Handford, has been lost in the shuffle over at Nickelodeon/Paramount and has now popped up on Universal’s crowded page. A deal has been settled along with Illumination Entertainment that beat out several competing studios for the project. As you might expect, this is being developed as a family film (hopefully with a huge budget for extras), but there has been no mention of how much, if any, of the original development work will be retained.
As the various studios option increasingly obscure comic book characters, and more of the large franchises enter into the realm of diminishing returns, it’s clear they’re looking for the next creative oil well. Comic books have provided for dozens of films that could be produced on a constant, manufacturing style basis, so it’s no surprise they’re trying hard to tap a similar batch of products that come with established branding and recognition. Waldo is probably the closest thing to a board game you can get with a child’s book, so it fits right alongside all of the Hasbro acquisitions at Universal. It will be interesting to see how successful a Monopoly or a new Clue turns out to be. If one of them blows up, will we see a decade long mining of these kinds of properties? I must admit, I’m curious to see someone try and tackle a “Rummikub” film…
Of all these more conceptual properties being developed, Waldo does seem like something that could be turned into an interesting, or at least fun film. There are plenty of examples of family-friendly films that actually have brains (though they seem to all be animated, and all from a single studio these days), and I had enough fun with these books as a kid to cross a couple of fingers for Waldo. Here’s hoping a decent adventure movie is born from this, and not another insultingly stupid Night at the ATM.
Of course, I can’t go without reposting this gem. Maybe Universal has a more adult take up their sleeves…
The Waldo Ultimatum – Watch more Funny Videos