Developed in the 1950s and manufactured by Mattel, the novelty Magic 8 Ball is one of the most iconic toys of all time, and it’s now getting a feature-length movie adaptation.
It was announced four years ago that Mattel and Blumhouse were joining forces to turn the toy into a live-action movie, with Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare) attached to direct.
It’s unclear if Blumhouse or Wadlow are still attached, but in a new feature in the New Yorker highlighting Barbie, it’s revealed that “Jimmy Warden, the screenwriter of Cocaine Bear, ha[s] devised a horror-comedy about the Magic 8 Ball.”
The approach, Robbie Brenner, head of Mattel Films told the mag, had been a subject of some debate. “We’re not going to make any rated-R movies,” she promised. Although the Magic 8 Ball script “walks the line a little bit,” she went on, “we’re not going to make anything that feels violent, or that is alienating to families. . . . We want to stay within the parameters of what Mattel is.”
The previous draft had been written by Wadlow, Jillian Jacobs, and Chris Roach.
The original press release noted that the film would be “suspense filled.”
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