While they aren't all great, Hollywood has often rolled the dice and made movies based on board games.

Hollywood loves adapting recognizable properties into films. Books are the most popular choice, since the story is already there, but occasionally they will stray into more unconventional sources for adaptation. One such source is tabletop games.

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Sometimes, tabletop games have built-in stories and expansive lore for filmmakers to draw from. Other times, all a game has is a recognizable name, and the screenwriters are left with the unenviable task of creating a world out of a bare-bones concept. These movies can be a bit of a mixed bag, but on occasion, they end up being pretty good.

Dungeons & Dragons was being eyed for a live-action adaptation since the 1980s. After the first adaptation failed to get made, the game's original publisher, TSR, was hesitant to try again. It took until 2000 to finally get a Dungeons and Dragons​ film off the ground, and based on how it turned out, it might have been better left in production hell.

Indecision about what the target audience should be led to a tonally inconsistent movie, full of PG-13 violence but hammy over-the-top performances that would be better suited for a kids' film. The movie bombed hard at the box office and became a punchline for movie critics and fans of the popular RPG.

The popular party game Mafia, sometimes called Werewolf, seems like a game that would make for an interesting film: Mysterious murders, a town full of people unsure of who they can trust, and mob justice. However, the 2016 Russian movie Mafia: The Game of Survival, decided to adapt the game a little too literally.

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Set in the near future of 2072, the movie revolves around a reality television show where 11 volunteers play a game of Mafia where they can win big or possibly die. While the game takes place in a virtual reality space and includes some big action set pieces, it's functionally a movie about people actually just playing the game it's based on.

Warhammer 40,000 is not just a tabletop game, it's also an extended media franchise. With countless novels and video game adaptations, it's actually pretty surprising that 2010's Ultramarines was the first movie to come out of the franchise.

Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie is short, even by animated movie standards, and many audiences complained about the quality of the CGI. However, other fans seemed to enjoy the story. With such a loyal fan base and a recent surge in popularity, it would be surprising if Games Workshop didn't take another shot at making a movie.

The full title of this film is Zig-Zag, Snakes and Ladders (a didactic fiction about cartography). As the title may suggest, this French film is entirely too esoteric to be based on one of the simplest board games.

It is a 30-minute surreal film about a man named H who gets involved in a game of Snakes and Ladders that suddenly becomes real. The film is meant to be an allegory for the filmmaker's thoughts on the complex and ever-expanding world of filmmaking. Despite being named after a popular children's game, there is little chance the kids who enjoy the game would be big fans of the film.

Board games aimed at young players are light on rules and strategy, so they can be easily understood by the children playing them. Candy Land: The Great Lollipop Adventure uses characters who are present in the game's artwork and adds some candy-related side characters for good measure.

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While it may seem a little strange to make a simple game like Candy Land into an animated movie, the company that distributes the game, Hasbro, is well known for making animated media to accompany their products. Though Candy Land never reached the same insane heights of popularity as something like Transformers or My Little Pony, this movie may have helped sell a few board games.

Ouija boards appear so frequently in horror movies that it can be easy for audiences to forget it was originally a board game, not a tool for dark rituals. The film Ouija is the first in a series of films where the titular board is used to unintentionally summon vengeful spirits and demons.

The Ouija movies tend to center on teenage protagonists in nondescript suburban neighborhoods. These movies perfectly cash in on teens' enjoyment of scaring themselves with games like Bloody Mary, fueling their imaginations of what might happen if they themselves were to buy a Ouija board and try it with their friends.

Under the Boardwalk is not a narrative film, but a documentary about one of the most famous board games ever made; Monopoly. If there's ever anything casual players ever wanted to know about Monopoly or the competitive scene surrounding the game, this movie covers it.

Not only does Under the Boardwalk talk about how the game was made, but also shows the national and world championships. The movie gets in-depth with the strategies and psychology of the people who play the game at its highest level. This film will answer the age-old question: "Who actually wants to play Monopoly?"

The game Clue, or Cluedo outside of North America, is itself based on mystery fiction like the works of Agatha Christie. That makes it only natural that it was a game well-suited to being turned into a mystery movie.

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To set it apart from the fiction it was based on, the film Clue went for a darkly comedic tone as opposed to a straightforward mystery. Names like Professor Plum and Mr. Boddy (the victim) are much more suited to a comedic tone, and the decision seems to have paid off as the movie became a cult classic.

Battleship is a game with a pretty simple premise; players command a fleet of ships and are trying to sink their opponent's fleet before their own goes down. The obvious way to adapt this game into a film would be to make a war movie centered around a naval battle. However, the 2012 film of the same name decided to take Battleship in a much more ambitious direction.

The movie Battleship focuses on the crew of a U.S. Navy ship as they try to defend the Earth against an alien invasion. The closest similarity it has to the game it's named after is the bombs the aliens use that look a bit like the red plugs used to indicate a hit in the board game. Whether it was box office poison Taylor Kitsch or the film's bad special effects, Battleship did not do well and was one of the few Hasbro movies not to spawn a sequel.

After the failure of the first movie adaptation and the relative obscurity of its sequels, D&D is once again being adapted for the big screen. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves hasn't come out yet, but based on the trailers it seems to have solved some of the original's issues.

Honor Among Thieves has clearly benefited from the advancements in technology since 2000, and it looks to be doing a much better job bringing the fantastic world and creatures of D&D to life. It also appears to have fixed the tone problem from the original movie, landing solidly in the realm of light-hearted action comedies like most Marvel movies or adventure films.

Next: The 10 Best D&D Board Games

Sean (he/him) is a writer and enjoyer of all things nerdy. Apart from comics, he enjoys table top games and occasionally making video content.

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