Settlers of Catan is being turned into a movie franchise

Settlers of Catan could be the next major board game to be transformed for the silver screen, following news that a film adaptation is in the works.

Driving the project is Air Force One, In the Line of Fire and Bicentennial Man producer Gail Katz, who acquired the rights to turn Klaus Teuber’s classic hit into a TV series of movie back in 2015. Katz recently worked on the similarly tabletop-themed biopic Pawn Sacrifice, about chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer.

“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,” Katz said in 2015.

“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.”

According to Variety, Katz is currently in talks with Sony Pictures about the project and will be joined by producers behind this year’s reboot of Stephen King’s It and The Lego Movie.

Writing the Catan flick will be Blaise Hemingway, who has also scripted upcoming movies based on the Playmobil and Ugly Dolls toys.

It’s suggested that the Catan film is being hurried through production with the aim to make it the first in a franchise based on Klaus Teuber’s multi-million-selling series – will we see a Seafarers sequel?

Catan isn’t the only board game-themed movie in the works; as well as this year’s reboot of Jumanji (albeit now taking place in a video game rather than the tabletop-set Robin Williams original), a comedy called Game Night has been in development since 2013 and stars Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman as attendees of a gaming evening that goes awry.