From Tabletop to Big Screen: The Top Movies Inspired by Classic Board Games

From Clue to Dungeons & Dragons, we love these game-to-film adaptations!

There’s something irresistible about the idea of hanging with your friends and family for a competitive, lively game night. 🎲 But while tabletop and board games are fun to play in real life, some of the most classic board games have enough source material to inspire filmmakers to create stories around them. And sometimes, fictional games make their way into movies, when writers make up a board game just to create a fantastic story around it. We’ve compiled a list of the most famous board games-turned-movies 🎥 (though we’ve left out video games turned into movies–that will be another post!). Some of these movies are fandom faves themselves, because fandom and gaming often goes hand in hand. Which of these is your favorite?

1. Clue

The cult classic film, Clue, released in 1985 is beloved amongst fans, but of course it is based on the game of the same name. You know the gist: it’s a murder mystery tabletop game where players are moved around the game board into different “rooms” to find clues. 🔍 It was invented in 1943 by British game designer Anthony E. Pratt, who was inspired by real life murder mystery games that would be played at parties and gatherings. Since the idea of the game came from real life play, it was ripe for a movie adaptation. The concept has stood the test of time, as newer movie franchises like the Knives Out films take on a similar plot: several folks are trapped together, one is murdered, and everyone is a suspect as they try to uncover the truth.

2. Ouija

If you were a kid in the 80s and 90s, chances are you were intrigued by a Ouija board at some point. (And if you attended a sleepover as a preteen with your pals, we can almost guarantee the Ouija board game came out sometime in between watching movies 🍿 and eating candy 🍬 way past midnight and trying to lift a friend off the floor playing “Light As A Feather, Stiff As A Board.”) This supernatural horror film from 2014 (and its 2016 sequel) are based on the very same game and taps into that spooky energy and sense of nostalgia. Ouija boards have been in existence since the 1880s, developed by spiritualists who believed you could use a “talking board” to communicate with the dead. 👻 Around 1890, a medium named Helen Peters Nosworthy gave the board its name, by asking it what it would like to be called (it spelled out “O-U-I-J-A”). Together with novelty designers Charles Kenard and Elijah Bond, the three filed for patents and were denied, until one patent officer asked the board to spell his name–which it did 👀. The rest, they say, is history.

3. Battleship

Based on the classic tabletop game of strategy of the same name, Battleship is a star-studded 2012 movie with as many famous names in it as we have pegs for those little plastic ships (Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Taylor Kitsch, and Rihanna to name a few). The film is an entirely original story based on the game that involves a small group of warships that must battle with an alien navy fleet. The Battleship board game can trace its origins back to the 1890s through World War I, and the first commercial version of the game appeared in 1931 under the name, Salvo. It wasn’t until 1967 when Milton Bradley published a version of the game that we know and love today–complete with plastic boards, ships, and pegs. An electronic version was also introduced in the 1970s.

4. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 

Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Bradley Cooper, and Hugh Grant all star in the well-received 2023 film, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, based on Dungeons & Dragons, the tabletop role-playing game. The plot is a fantasy film with healthy doses of action and comedy, and is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting from the game. This movie was heavily anticipated, as earlier films weren’t that thrilling for fans of the game. Dungeons & Dragons, or D&D, was first published in 1974 and marked the beginning of tabletop role-playing games (RPG). Each player adopts a character and is taken through an adventure in a fantasy setting conceived of and maintained by a designated Dungeon Master (DM). The movie was co-directed by John Francis Daley, who famously played Sam in the 1999 fan favorite show, Freaks & Geeks. Since Sam and his friends often play D&D in the show, Daley gathered his former co-stars for an epic callback to their characters’ fandom for the game in an ad for the movie. 

5. Jumanji 

Jumanji isn’t a real game, but it is a game created in a work of fiction. Author Chris Van Allsburg published Jumanji in 1981, and the plot follows two children, Peter and Judy, who play an enchanted board game where all the creatures and the jungle from the game come to life. They must finish the game to reset everything back to normal–and when they do, they decide they’re done with Jumanji and give the game away to their next-door neighbors, two boys. The movie, Jumanji, was released in 1995, and brings the story from the book to life with some new twists. Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, David Alan Grier, Bonnie Hunt and more star in this film. The characters of Peter and Judy find the game, and as they begin to play they release a man who has been trapped inside the game for decades. The action takes the players on a quest to save the man, and help him reset his life from the moment the game took him away. Van Allsburg himself wrote one of the film’s screenplay drafts, earning him a story credit for the additional material added to the original book’s plot. Because of the film’s success, a board game version now exists (minus the actual real life jungle), as well as a video game.

6. Zathura 

Remember the two boys that Peter and Judy gave their Jumanji game to in the book? Well, author Chris Van Allsburg featured them in his sequel to Jumanji twenty one years later: Zathura, published in 2002. Brothers Danny and Walter are those two boys, and they find the game Peter and Judy left, but aren't interested. Instead they find another game underneath it called Zathura. Like Jumanji, this game affects the real world–and before they know it Danny and Walter are transported to a meteor shower in outer space. The movie adaptation released in 2005, Zathura: A Space Adventure, is based on the book, but not at all a sequel to the Jumanji film. This film is quite true to the book it is based on, centering on brothers Danny and Walter who find themselves in outer space 🪐 upon starting to play the game.

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