Academy Award nominee Beau Willimon (Netflix’s House of Cards, The Ides of March) is teaming up with Hasbro subsidiary Entertainment One to produce television adaptation of the board game Risk, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The series would be the first project to come from the multi-year first-look TV deal Entertainment One signed with Westward, the production company founded by Willimon and Jordan Tappis (The First, Grand Army), as reported by Deadline.
Entertainment One, also known as eOne, was bought by Hasbro in the final weeks of 2019, Variety reports. The upcoming Risk series is the latest tabletop game adaptation to be announced from the company. They are also facilitating development on scripted series co-authored by Michael and Paul Clarkson (His Dark Materials, The Haunting of Bly Manor) based on Dungeons & Dragons, as well as a feature film inspired by Monopoly co-produced by and starring comedian Kevin Hart (Night School, Get Hard), according to Deadline. A new movie based on Clue starring Ryan Reynolds (Free Guy, Detective Pikachu) and written by Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese (Deadpool, Wayne) is also on the way, via Collider.
Risk celebrated its sixtieth anniversary in 2019, although its invention dates back to the early 1950’s. Academy Award winner Albert Lamorisse (The Red Balloon, Circus Angel) allegedly invented the game, originally called La Conquȇte du Monde or The Conquest of the World, over the course of family vacation, according to The History Reader. Lamorisse applied for a patent in 1954 and sold the idea to French game manufacturer Miro, who, in turn, gave the U.S. release rights to Parker Brothers, via The History Reader.
Risk sold over 100,000 copies in its first year on the market and popularized the “war game” genre in the process, The History Reader reports. Its strategic gameplay and conquest-based objectives have been adopted by massively popular games such as Axis & Allies and the Battleground series. On the digital side of things, Risk‘s influence can be seen in groundbreaking titles such as Computer Bismarck and Sid Meier’s Civilization. In pop culture, Risk‘s intensity, difficulty and protracted duration were memorably captured in 1995 episode of Seinfeld.