By Andrew Dodson on February 20, 2015 at 1:56am
According to Deadline, Gail Katz (producer of "Air Force One," "The Perfect Storm," and most recently, "Pawn Sacrifice") has acquired the movie and TV rights to the classic euro board game "Settlers of Catan."
I’ve been wanting to see an adaptation of the game for years, ever since my "Catan"-obsessed college-aged kids introduced me to it. The island of Catan is a vivid, visual, exciting, and timeless world with classic themes and moral challenges that resonate today. There is a tremendous opportunity to take what people love about the game and its mythology as a starting point for the narrative.
Gail Katz, Producer
For the uninitiated, "Settlers of Catan" is a German board game where players play colonists on the island of Catan. The goal is to earn 10 victory points before everyone else, and you do that by building roads, towns, armies, and other structures. You can't accomplish those objectives on your own (well, you can, but it's much more difficult), so players much rely on strategically trading with one another to quickly achieve their goals.
At this point, there is no plot or story set for this movie or television show, and since the game "Settlers of Catan" doesn't really have it's own story or lore, the end result for this project could literally be about anything. Because of that, fans of "Settlers of Catan" don't seem to have a ton of faith in their game successfully making a jump to the silver screen. A lot of people are expecting another "Battleship," the unpopular movie from 2012 based on the board game of the same name.
How about this for a possible plot for a Settlers movie though:
The movie could be set during the 1600-1700s, when Europe was exploring and colonizing the world. Three groups land on the same island around the same time - each representing a different country or trade company. The size of the island prevents each group from knowing about the other right away, but slowly, as each group builds settlements and roads, they start to connect. There is conflict, of course, all the groups wanting the resource-rich island to themselves. Slowly, however, the different groups start noticing that their people are being killed and their supplies are being raided. They suspect one another at first, but slowly they realize that they are not alone on the island. Something else has been watching them, and the groups have to start working together to find whatever is in the untamed portions of the island and truly become Settlers of Catan.
Yeah, it's a bit cheesy, but for a game that doesn't really have a story of it's own, it could be a lot worse. It has all the important parts - the different groups, building settlements, eventual trade, the need for armies and, of course, the Thief (the 'unknown' element). There is a lot of potential for the movie to tie in a bunch of stuff about imperialism, struggles of colonialism and the conquering of the last wild places.
It could be okay.
Player Theory will keep you up to date on any other "Settlers of Catan" movie (or other board-games-to-movie adaption) news that may come up!
