Universal Won't Play Clue

But Gore Verbinski will keep the game onIf we were a director or producer developing a project at Universal right now, we'd probably be feeling extremely nervous. Because following on from the company putting Guillermo del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness on hold and backing out of Ron Howard's plans to adapt the Dark Tower series comes word that the studio is dropping Hasbro murder mystery game property Clue, which has Gore Verbinski overseeing its slow - slower now - progress to the screen. Okay, so it's not exactly on the same level as those others, but it was part of the big deal Universal made with toy giant Hasbro to turn some of its games into movies, the same deal that is bringing the world Battleship and Candy Land, among others. And this latest development does not mean that Clue is now a corpse lying on a rug with blood flowing from knife wounds. Verbinski and the Hasbro team are holding on to the rights and are free to take it elsewhere. They've also attached two writers to work on the script a little more, with Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama aboard. The scripting pair has worked on a draft of the new Flash Gordon for Sony and are in the middle of working over Dracula Year Zero, for Universal itself, finding ways to trim the budget flesh on that one...