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Producer trades sheep, two wood for “Settlers of Catan” film, TV rights



One of the most bewildering trends I've seen in gaming over the last few years is Hollywood's obsession with adaptations of games that have next to no narrative, plot, or character of any kind. It's one thing to adapt the lore of Assassin's Creed or The Legend of Zelda into less interactive forms, especially after films like Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia did well at the box office. It's another to purchase the film rights to the likes of Tetris, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Spy Hunter, all of which have or had film projects in the works at some point... for some reason.

This is all a long-winded way of contextualizing the bewildering news that the immensely popular "Settlers of Catan" board game has been optioned for film and TV adaptations by producer Gail Katz, a veteran of blockbusters like The Perfect Storm and Air Force One.

"I’ve been wanting to see an adaptation of the game for years, ever since my Catan-obsessed college-aged kids introduced me to it,” Katz said in a statement. "The island of Catan is a vivid, visual, exciting, and timeless world with classic themes and moral challenges that resonate today. There is a tremendous opportunity to take what people love about the game and its mythology as a starting point for the narrative."

As an avid, almost hipster Settlers of Catan player since the late '90s, I have to say that I had absolutely no awareness of the game's underlying "mythology" until Katz mentioned it. I'm also struggling to evince any of the game's alleged "classic themes and moral challenges," unless "I need to take that spot on the 8 of wood before Jon builds another road" counts as a moral challenge.

As a game, it's a fun, abstract battle of bartering over limited resources. As a film or TV show, it'll likely be the same generic medieval fantasy that everyone seems eager to crank out in the wake of Game of Thrones becoming an unlikely hit.

In any case, the "Catan" franchise has sold over 18 million copies as a board game and an additional two million copies through app downloads, according to a New Yorker profile from last year. That apparently makes it enough of a known, "Hey, I've heard that name before" property to potentially feature in multiplexes alongside board game movies like 2012's blockbuster hit Battleship, last year's execrable Ouija, and a stalled Candy Land film project described as "Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy."

All that said, I think a historical drama based on the Ticket to Ride board game could actually be interesting.

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