Mattel is making more than toys lately, and even without Toy Story I am sure we will be seeing more of their products translated to big screen properties.

The latest to make the leap. The Magic 8 Ball.

JoBlo

Paramount has - get this - “extended its business with Mattel, optioning the venerable Magic 8 Ball to use as the basis for a live action adventure film.”

While most of the intarwebz are a buzz with bashing this idea as stupid, I personally think it has loads of potential.

This is a property with no story. And while that seems like a big obsticle for making it into a movie, its actually quite ingenious.

They can’t mess it up!

Ok, they can. As with any film it has as good a chance of being good as it does of stinking up the joint. But it has to work in its favour since after all, out of the 20 possible answers the 8 Ball has in its polyhedron of fate, exactly half of them are positive, a quarter are neutral and only the last quarter are bad.

All they need is an original script that revolved around a device that offers vague glimpses of the future - like a crystal ball, or a person who sees the future - and then tweak the story to involve the classic fad toy instead, and suddenly you have your entire marketing plan already hatched.

Brand recognition and an original script.

I don’t see a bad side to this.