Nathan Field: Hollywood finds gold at bottom of barrel

The film 'Battleship', directed by Peter Berg and featuring actress Brooklyn Decker, is due for release next year. Photo / AP

Movies based on toys and games are big money-spinners, writes Nathan Field, senior equity analyst at Gareth Morgan Investments.

What do Battleship, Monopoly, Risk, the Magic 8-ball and Barbie have in common?

Apart from being available at your local toy shop, they're all in various stages of development at Hollywood film studios. Battleship, due out next year, is relatively easy to imagine on the big screen.

But a movie about a plastic, fortune-telling pool ball? We can only hope it's a comedy.

The world's two largest toymakers, Hasbro and Mattel, are laughing all the way to the bank. You can blame Transformers for the phenomenon.

Since 1984, Hasbro's original toy line has expanded to include comic books, TV series, animated movies and video games. But it was the success of the live-action, Steven Spielberg-produced blockbuster in 2007 that really changed the game.

Despite mixed reviews, Transformers grossed US$700 million ($840 million) at the global box office. Two sequels have followed, and more are threatened.

This is a win-win situation for Hasbro. Previously, toymakers made money from Hollywood by bidding for the rights to produce merchandise from popular franchises like Star Wars and Jurassic Park. Hollywood came up with the ideas and the toymakers piggy-backed on all the hype and publicity.

Now, toymakers are pushing their own brands into the movies as well as pulling new brands out. Transformers was a huge money-spinner for Hasbro in this regard.

When the movie was released in 2007, sales of Transformers toys jumped from less than US$100 million a year to more than US$500 million.

Unsurprisingly, Hasbro now has more than 10 movies based on its products in the pipeline - from Candy Land (based on a board game for pre-schoolers) to Stretch Armstrong 3D (a flexible action figure).

Movie studios are jumping on board because kids' stuff is box office gold.

In 2010, five of the top 10 movies at the US box office were animated, headed by Toy Story 3.

Three more films were aimed squarely at a young audience (Harry Potter, Twilight, and Alice in Wonderland), while another was a comic book adaptation (Iron Man 2).

Yes, many of these movies work on different levels and appeal to wider audiences, but we're still talking about boy wizards and toy cowboys. Of the top 10, only Inception, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller, might be considered too challenging for a 9-year-old.

Kids' movies have always been popular but it's only in the past decade that they've completely swamped the box office. And given that Hasbro and Mattel sell iconic products for children, these companies are sitting on pots of gold.

To date, there hasn't been a hint of a backlash, even though toy- and game-based movies represent product placement taken to the extreme.

Remember the fuss over Minority Report, the 2002 Tom Cruise thriller which shamelessly showcased brands like Pepsi, Gap and Lexus?

Probably not - but it caused a minor stir at the time. Audiences were either outraged or sneeringly amused at the nerve of the filmmaker (Spielberg, again). I, Robot and the recent James Bond movies carried on the trend, but product placements haven't got markedly worse, and studios seem to be mindful not to push the envelope too far.

But although adults baulked at being briefly pounded over the head with advertising in Minority Report, they didn't seem to care (or perhaps realise) that the GI Joe and Transformers movies were essentially two-hour product placements.

Or perhaps it's the upfront nature of the advertising that audiences can forgive - it's okay to watch a movie about action figures because the brand is right there in the title.

But if that's the case, where is the line drawn? Would people flock to a comedy starring Ronald McDonald? Or an action thriller about KPMG accountants saving the world?

Doubtful. Even if they were somehow made interesting, audiences would likely object to paying 15 bucks for the privilege of watching an extended ad.

Toy companies, however are given a free pass.

Hasbro and Mattel are hungry for profits just like any other multinational, but the make-believe nature of their products means they've slipped under the anti-corporate radar.

Toys and board games are treated like comic book or video game adaptations, despite their near absence of a narrative. They are products, not stories.

Fair play to Hasbro and Mattel. Both companies have made aggressive, sometimes painful, acquisitions over the past 30 years and they deserve some reward for their risk.

Maybe they even had incredible foresight - anticipating the day when rainy day board games would star in their own movies.

But why now? Most of the toys and games currently being made into movies have been around for decades.

Why has Hollywood suddenly decided that Battleship, a game that was invented in the early 1900s, is a knockout concept for a movie in 2011?

Some would point to the infantilism of popular culture and the relentless dumbing down of society, and there might be a grain of truth in that.

But perhaps a simpler explanation is that Hollywood is starved of ideas. Having run out of classic 80s TV series, obscure comic books, vampire novels and gory video games for source material, they've finally reached the end of the line.

And at the end of that line is a plastic, fortune-telling pool ball.