Activision Blizzard recently set out to acquire King for $5.9 billion. The acquisition still has to be approved but it looks like it's about as done a deal as any. One of the properties King owns is Candy Crush, and Stephen Colbert and Liam Neeson imitated what a movie based on that property could be like.
You can check out the clip below from the Late Show YouTube channel.
The skit is full of puns based around candy and the game design of Candy Crush Saga, with Neeson, playing the father, quipping about level barriers keeping him from his son, played by Colbert. It's not quite as funny as Liam Neeson's commercial for Clash of Clans but it tries its hardest to hit that sweet spot.
For people who know what Candy Crush is all about I don't know if they found it funny or not – only the last part with the microtransaction pop-up occurring in order to hear the rest of what Neeson was going to say was the only thing that really gave me a genuine chuckle.
I actually thought Colbert's stab at the Call of Duty movie having a foul-mouthed 12-year-old sitting beside you at a movie theater was funnier than the Candy Crush skit. I think part of it is that most aware gamers and consumers see it as a game people play to just pass the time and that it's essentially a money click-pit. Tim Schafer, a few years ago while on an episode of GTTV, mentioned that those are probably the worst kind of games given that they aren't really games but designed to find ways to lure in casuals and get them to spend money in any way possible.
Nevertheless, Activision sees big money in brands like Candy Crush, and with their new movie and television studio aimed at producing projects in house, it's actually not impossible that a Candy Crush movie could come out of the deal. They already have a Skylanders animated television series in the works and they're planning on doing plenty of stuff with Call of Duty while the brand is white hot. That's assuming they can top this year's outing of Black Ops 3 with something equally as compelling next year in order to hold people over until it's time to release the new TV show and movie(s).
As for how successful this skit about Candy Crush was? Well, I think people who know about the game probably chuckled a few times because of some of the jabs at the game's addictive microtransaction nature, but anyone who isn't familiar with the game I can't see the skit really hitting it off.
Anyway, don't be surprised if Activision really does make a movie based on King's uber-popular franchise, but not before they tap Skylanders, Warcraft and Call of Duty.
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