We live in a world where a film can be made based off of absolutely anything. Angry Birds is already on its way and the Emoji Movie won’t be too far behind that. Some of these, like The LEGO Movie, can be a lot of fun. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re all born from a crippling fear of original ideas.
Studios only want to green light movies that are based on pre-existing IPs. They want to prove that whatever they are investing in can make money before they spend a single cent. It’s not great, but that’s where the industry is at these days and that’s why there are more and more films based on less likely properties.
Because of that, though, we have possibilities for beloved horror properties from our past that—before now—had no chance of ever being adapted to film. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, it’s what we’ve got.
Count Chocula
Count Chocula could make for an adorable Dracula parody, featuring an out-of-touch Count living in a choco-fied version of Transylvania. Maybe the locals never go up the road toward the castle because it’s a place of Dark Chocolate. Either way, the real money maker would be a surprise cameo from Department of Monster Containment officer Frank N. Berry, who would arrive with a leather jacket and an eye patch to tell Chocula that he was part of a larger universe. Because if there’s one way all of this just ends, it’s with the General Mills Monsters Cinematic Universe.
My Pet Monster was an ugly plush toy that spawned an even uglier cartoon, but both were adorable in their own way. Nostalgic fans would love to see Monster go toe-to-toe with his arch-enemy Beastur on the big screen. It would be an unsettling kind of kids movie, but we used to have those all the time and sadly we don’t see them much anymore. If there’s anything that kids can love and be scared of at the same time, it’s My Pet Monster.
Boglins
A Boglins movie would not need a large budget to work. In fact, it kind of works better the lower the budget gets. Because, really, Boglins is meant to be a spiritual successor to Ghoulies. Maybe with a little more money and a little more charm, but it’s aiming for the same end result. And as that kind of feature, it could work. It was the kind of thing we saw a lot of in the ‘80s and don’t see any of now.
Fangoria
Yes, this seems like an impossible idea, to turn the beloved horror magazine into a movie, but that seems to be the way things are headed. The more unlikely something is to work as a feature, the faster it gets green lit. But having said that? It could work. Think of the failed but surprisingly good TV show The Chronicle. This could follow the same format, only instead of a tabloid that reports strange happenings, it could be about a journalist who’s tasked with investigating strange occurrences all over the world and reporting them as fictionalized set reports.
Ecto Cooler
If there’s even the slightest chance that the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot is at all profitable, you know there will be at least one meeting about a Slimer spinoff. If that happens, this is the only correct answer. You can’t do a Slimer spinoff without just doing an Ecto Cooler movie. This mucus colored Hi-C was such an integral part of people’s youth that it’s actually coming back this summer to coincide with the film’s release.
Creepy Crawlers
Kids of the ‘90s will remember this bizarre toy, which was pretty much advertised at the time as being the boys’ answer to the E-Z Bake Oven. It was a toy that made little molds of bugs and, well, that was basically all it did. But it was very popular and even spawned its own short-lived and baffling cartoon.
Mighty Max
There was a fascination in the early 1990s with toys being as small as they possibly could because, by God, if kids under 3 were going to swallow small parts they were going to swallow all of them. Mighty Max operated under the same principle as Polly Pocket except this kid got into adventures with all of the classic monsters and the toys looked cool before you even opened them up. It spawned a cartoon series that was awesome but vastly overlooked.
