Of all the intellectual properties in the world, Netflix has acquired rights to Ticket to Ride.
Deadline reports that Netflix has secured global rights to the beloved board game, with a feature film as the first project in development. Writers Ben Mekler and Chris Amick are attached to the project, which is being developed in the kids and family space.
For the uninitiated: Ticket to Ride is a railway-themed strategy game in which players collect colored cards and claim train routes across maps of various continents. It is charming, accessible, family-friendly, and - as a basis for a narrative film - entirely without obvious plot. It does not have characters. It does not have conflict. It has train routes and colored cards.
This is, of course, exactly what people said about Battleship, which became a $220 million film that no one remembers fondly. It is also what people said about Barbie, which became a billion-dollar cultural event. The difference between those two outcomes is entirely about execution - specifically, whether the filmmakers found something to say that the IP merely unlocked rather than determined.
The optimistic version of a Ticket to Ride film would borrow from the game's most evocative quality: the romance of train travel, the geography of long journeys, the sense that the world is large and crossing it is an adventure. You could make something in the spirit of Around the World in 80 Days or The Darjeeling Limited - a travel film where the board game's cross-continental spirit provides the thematic spine without dictating the story. The kids-and-family framing at least suggests a tonal direction: warm, adventurous, probably involving at least one train that goes somewhere very dramatic.
The cynical version does not need to be described. We have all seen it.
Mekler and Amick are the names to watch. Their approach to the material will tell you everything about which version this becomes. The question has always been whether the adaptation actually cares about making a movie, or just about clearing the rights and cashing the check.
