Candy Land: The Movie?

When I was a kid, I was rather in love with the Candy Land board game. So much so in fact, that I not only made up my own character to add to it but also imagined it as an animated movie for which I cast every character.

What seemed genius as a child, I have long since recognized as ultimate nerdy lameness. The character I made up was named Larry Strawberry and he simply lived in a field of sugar-coated strawberries. Wow, Kasey. Brilliant.

Although I will give myself a gold star for my imaginary voice-over cast which featured Christina Ricci, Wilford Brimley, Frank Welker, Tim Curry, and the now-deceased John Ritter and Maureen Stapleton, among others. Hey, not too shabby of a casting job considering I was about ten years old!

But apparently Universal Studios decided not to hire me as casting director even though they have officially announced that the Candy Land film is underway!

According to Variety.com, this is the first film to emerge from the deal Universal made last February with Hasbro, whose properties are the basis for the summer tent-pole films G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Now when I first heard about this project, I was immediately dreamy-eyed and hopeful that the plan was to take the characters and plot, and give them a dark, American McGee-esque twist.

I envisioned Jolly of the Gumdrop Mountains to be a dirty, red-eyed goblin!

Queen Frostine turned into the tyrannical goddess of the ice cream sea, complete with iridescent skin and solid white eyes!

I saw the villainous Lord Licorice as a cloaked, monocled, sunken-faced pedophile!

But once again Universal and I are at odds. The director attached to this project is not Tim Burton. Nor is it Terry Gilliam. Nor any other director who would keep my dream of a dark and twisted land alive. The director shall be none other than Kevin Lima, whose directing history includes Disney's Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians, and his biggest success of all: Enchanted.

But perhaps Lima will be taking things in a darker direction since he is now under the helm of Universal instead of Disney? I'm gonna guess not so much. For whom does the studio have writing the screenplay? Etan Cohen, whose major film credits include Tropic Thunder, Madagascar 2: Escape From Africa, as well as what I'm sure was a tremendously insightful and poignant film entitled My Wife is Retarded.

So while I am still likely to go see Candy Land when it's released in 2011, it would've been nice to keep that macabre dream alive at least a little bit longer.

Alas... Parting is such sweet sorrow. (Pun unabashedly intended).



But who knows? Perhaps Lima and Cohen will yet surprise me. The tiny optimist inside me apparently endures.