Having already plundered a sizable chunk of its '80s movie output and Saturday morning cartoons for inspiration, guess where creatively bankrupt, risk-averse Hollywood is turning its attentions next?

For an, ahem, clue, look no further than that shelf that holds all your dusty old board games, because, judging from current studio activity, you could pretty much hang a Coming Attractions sign above them.

That's right -- those ever-cautious Tinseltown players are rolling the dice that movies based on games will be just the ticket to get budget-conscious audiences to part with their hard-earned dollars. And we don't mean video games, either. With the exception of a Lara Croft here and a Resident Evil there, big-screen takes on video games have largely been critical and commercial disasters. Super Mario Bros? Wing Commander? Bloodrayne? Doom? Need we continue?

No, we're talking honest-to-goodness board games such as Monopoly, Battleship and (once more with feeling), Clue.

The original directive had been issued back in 2008, when Universal and Hasbro announced a "six-year strategic partnership" that would have seen the studio develop a number of the venerable toy company's games, including the above.

But, perhaps experiencing cold feet as the result of the stalling economy or maybe not quite knowing how to turn Community Chest into a cinematic proposition, Universal recently cut several of the projects loose.

Filmmaker Ridley Scott is nevertheless moving forward where Monopoly is concerned. Scott, who will also be producing the movie along with Hasbro, has hired the screenwriting team of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt) to furnish a script that would reportedly revolve around a Donald Trump-type real estate mogul.

While Scott remains committed to Monopoly, other high-profile directors are also going full-speed ahead on their game movies.

Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, Hancock) is currently in post-production on Battleship, a big-budget take on the Hasbro game of the same name, starring Alexander Skarsgard and Liam Neeson. He'll have to wait until next May to find out if audiences proclaim, "It's a hit!"

Meanwhile, the director known as McG (Charlie's Angels) is still in the process of trying to find a new taker for his proposed Ouija board movie after Universal said goodbye. So far he hasn't had much luck getting other studios to bite on his Jumanji-type take on the film, which has a script penned by Sherlock Holmes screenwriter Simon Kinsberg.

Then you've got the guys who wrote Kung-Fu Panda 2, working away on a screen version of that child's first game known as Candy Land.According to co-scribe, Glenn Berger, they envision it as Lord of The Rings, but set in a world of candy. Danny DeVito as King Kandy -- whaddya say?

And even though it was already done back in 1985, to less than arresting effect, Clue is still due for a remake even without Universal's involvement. Filmmaker Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is still very much intent on reviving Col. Mustard and company, but, hopefully, without the three-alternate-endings gimmick.

With many of the above still in the planning stages, it remains to be seen how they eventually, uh, play out, but we have a hunch some of them won't end up passing GO and collecting 200 anything.