Universal's relationship with Hasbro isn't completely dead. After agreeing to the $200M+ Battleship, which Peter Berg quickly turned into his own personal version of aqua-Transformers, the studio began to take a harder look at the movies they had upcoming with the board game creators. Almost all of them, including the once highly touted Stretch Armstrong with Taylor Lautner, were dumped with Hasbro vowing to get them made elsewhere. But one of those thought dead projects has been revived, and it's arguably the least interesting of the bunch.
Universal has decided to bring Ouija out of turnaround, fast tracking the film for a 2013 release. Once intended to be a $100M blockbuster adventure with McG(uuugghhh!!!) at the helm, the studio is taking a much different path now. No doubt noticing the rapid fire financial return of movies like Chronicle and Project X, Ouija will now see it's budget slashed to $5M. The film will be produced by Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes along with Blumhouse Productions, the studio behind low budget horror king, Paranormal Activity. So that might explain Universal's decision to turn this into a scare flick, probably similar in tone and content to The Devil Inside.
With the reduced budget, you can bet your ass McG is out of the picture, so a new director will need to be found. The script will need to be cranked out pretty quick, too. Marti Noxon did a rewrite last year, but that's probably no longer in play. Oh joy, more reason to be excited! An already bad concept done in a really fast and half-assed way. [Deadline]
