Paramount, which scored a major success with Hasbro’s Transformers, has extended its deal with toy company Mattel by acquiring the rights to make a live action adventure movie based on the Magic 8-Ball, a predictive toy, which contains a die with 20 pre-set answers.  Hollywood’s headlong pursuit of “toyetic” properties, which is evident in numerous projects currently in development including Battleship, Stretch Armstrong, Risk, and Major Mason, made it likely that a studio would try to make a Magic 8-Ball movie, especially since Universal is already prepping a film based on Hasbro’s Ouija Board Game (see “Lost Scribes on Board for Ouija”).

 

Deadline New York is reporting that Paramount, which is already working with Mattel on a Max Steel movie, has hired Jon Gunn and John Mann, who have written Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians for Dreamworks Animation, to write the screenplay for the Magic 8-Ball movie.