The last year or so has seen the Ouija movie stand on some pretty shaky ground. The project originally had director Pierre Morel attached before he dropped out last November and then McG picked it up. On the writing side, Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (Tron: Legacy) wrote the first draft of the script before both Evan Spiliotopoulos and Simon Kinberg were brought on to take passes at it. Pre-production woes have always had a bad habit of negatively affecting the final product, but you don't have to worry about that in this case.
Vulture has learned that Ouija has been put into turnaround by Universal, which is a nice way of saying that the project is dead. The move comes just a few weeks after the studio dropped the Clue remake, another movie based on a Hasbro property. The idea was born out of a deal brokered between Universal and the toymakers back in 2008. Of the projects put into motion by that deal, which included games and toys like Candy Land and Stretch Armstrong, only Battleship has actually made it into production. Michael Bay, who is a producer on Ouija, and McG will begin shopping the movie to other studios next week, but it is said that Paramount has already passed.
Why does it feel like every time we write a story about a studio dropping a project Universal is involved? First came At The Mountains of Madness back in March, then The Dark Tower last month and now both Clue and Ouija in August. Though they had some under-performers this summer, Fast Five, Bridesmaids and Hop all br0ught in a ton of cash. Then again, I'm not the kind of guy who is going to complain because a movie based on a board game isn't getting made.
