Having mined every conceivable avenue they can for profitable content, streamers and Hollywood studios have moved from reboots and sequels to video games, toys and, even emojis as sandboxes for development. Now, in an effort to revitalise their reality TV offerings, streamers and networks are boldly going where their predecessors unsuccessfully went before: your childhood board games.
In April, Netflix announced that it had negotiated a deal with Hasbro, the owners of the IP for Monopoly to develop a reality TV series based on the board game that brings out the ruthless capitalist in all of us. On paper, the idea of turning a board game that has sold over half a billion copies in more than 100 countries since its launch in 1935 might make good business sense. It’s less clear how a separate feature film adaptation, which is being produced by Barbie star Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds at Lionsgate, might manage to create a satisfying narrative out of buying real estate, paying rent and going to jail, but that’s not Netflix’s problem.
Hasbro has previously licensed its Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble games to the CW network for reality shows that you may never have heard of. Monopoly had a mostly forgotten 20th century TV game show outing created by talk show host Merv Griffin and aired on ABC for 12 dismal weeks in 1990.
Little is known about Netflix’s reality show Monopoly, but in September Deadline.com reported that three companies (including studios behind The Traitors, Million Dollar Secret and Buying Beverly Hills) were in a much-anticipated “bake-off” to produce the show. Netflix’s decision to secure the rights to Monopoly was inspired by a recent development that didn’t exist in the terrestrial network TV age of Griffin. That’s the release of Monopoly Go! — the mobile app version of the game launched in 2023 and since downloaded about 150-million times, generating $5bn in profits for Hasbro. The gameplay for that version, geared towards the shorter attention span and instant gratification demands of digital audiences, may influence the final format of the reality show version.
Netflix also announced plans this week to produce another show based on a Hasbro-owned property — the murder mystery game Cluedo (Clue in the US). The new unscripted series will, according to Deadline, “feature a group of contestants facing physical and mental challenges to collect clues before stepping into a real-life game of deduction and deception. To win, they’ll have to outwit opponents and identify the who, where, and with what of the crime. Guess right and add money to the prize pot; guess wrong and they may be eliminated. They’ll be surrounded by familiar suspects such as Col Mustard, Miss Scarlett, Prof Plum and Mrs White.”
Cluedo was previously adapted for British TV in a game show format on ITV, where it ran for four series in 1990-93 and featured audience members attempting to solve a murder mystery after watching clips featuring actors and interrogating them. The game was also the source for a much-loved, campy film adaptation — 1985’s Clue starring Tim Curry — and a less well-known one-hour animated version, Cluedo, released last year.
According to Netflix’s vice-president of unscripted series, Jeff Gaspin, the idea is inspired by many generations’ memories of playing the board game and aims to offer audiences “a fresh, imaginative whodunit competition that will invite today’s audiences into that iconic world”.
With board game adaptation options quickly disappearing, video games have been touted as the next big field for feature films and series material and toys looking to replicate the blockbuster success of Barbie.
Enter Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon who in partnership with The New York Times is developing a pilot for a new NBC game show based on the puzzle game Wordle, which the newspaper purchased from its creator, Josh Wardle, in 2022 and was last year played 5.3-billion times. Fallon, whose talk show features a variety of comic game show-style regular segments, will produce, with NBC News’ Morning Show anchor Savannah Guthrie set to host. How much excitement can be generated by a six-guess, five-letter word puzzle game remains to be seen, but The New York Times has been exploring the option of taking Wordle to TV for some time and hopes that an on-screen version will generate even more returns on the estimated $3m it paid its creator for it.
So, if this festive season, you’re seeing red and about to jump over the table and smack your know-it-all cousin in the face during the annual familial-loyalty-testing game of Trivial Pursuit, maybe pause and think how you could translate that drama into edge-of-your-seat reality TV content. It could be the idea that finally lets you quit your day job, live the high life and get a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free cards.
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