Sadly, it looks like it has. Despite being masterminded by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson – the directors of some of the best loved and wildly overlong films about robot children and big monkeys ever made – it’s been reported that the proposed 3D animated Tintin movie has been passed over by Universal for being too expensive.

We genuinely didn’t see this coming – we knew the global economy was fragile at the moment, but so fragile that the world will be deprived of a movie based on the racially dubious adventures a marginally popular ginger Belgian journalist made using prohibitively costly pioneering technology? We’re in worse trouble than we thought.

If there are two people in the world you don’t say no to, it’s Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. That’s not to say you shouldn’t say no to them – especially when they say things like “I want to make a three-hour film about Jack Black waggling his eyebrows at a gorilla” or “No, really, it’ll be great – just like the other Indiana Jones movies, but with a fridge that can withstand nuclear explosions!” – but you don’t.

Universal, however, has. One of the most highly-anticipated movies of the next few years was to be Tintin. Tintin was going to be a guaranteed success. For starters it’d be based on Herge’s beloved series of comic strips – the world’s third most popular Belgian export after mind-numbing tedium and seafood-initiated Staphylococcus – and secondly because it’d be directed by both Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.

Whichever way you look at it, Tintin couldn’t be anything other than a massive success. Adapted from a source that both directors obviously cherish, the Tintin movie would have benefited from both of their expertise – Steven Spielberg’s proven experience of crafting stories based around tender, fractured families and Peter Jackson’s love of really long scenes about nothing performed in made-up languages interspersed with scenes of an elf getting beaten up by some trees – but maybe we’ll never get to see that now.

You see, Universal – the studio that was favourite to make Tintin – has pulled out at the last minute over the movie’s budget. Although set at $130 million, Universal worked out that Tintin would need to make $425 million before it could even break even thanks to the large profit percentage that Spielberg and Jackson would claim from it. Get The Big Picture reports:

The money tree would shake out this way: 30% of total revenue from box office, DVD, and TV sales for Spielberg and Jackson, which would be around $100 million, after which Universal could start to make back its coin.

This is just the latest piece of bad luck for Peter Jackson, who had previously ploughed his efforts into making a Halo movie only to similarly see that similarly blow up in his face. And if studios are now being so affected by global economic trends that they’re turning down surefire family-favourite movies like Tintin, what hope does Steven Spielberg have of seeing his movie about temporal signatures and gravity-wave strengths get greenlit?

Let’s not be too downhearted, though – undeterred by Universal’s dismissal, Spielberg and Jackson are already pimping Tintin to Paramount, and if it’s given the go-ahead, filming could start in as little as a month. But probably not before some budget cuts have been made.

In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if – by the time it’s released – Tintin is less of an eye-popping 3D animation about a globe-trotting reporter battling the forces of evil and more of a 13-minute video of a ginger bloke sitting at a desk looking for a stapler and muttering to himself that was filmed on Peter Jackson’s mobile phone.

Read more:

Spielberg and Jackson Can’t Get Money to Make ‘Tintin’ – Get The Big Picture

But that's what's going to happen. Universal has signed up with toy firm Hasbro to make a bunch of films based on Hasbro products, possibly starting with – seriously – a Monopoly movie by Sir Ridley Scott. Nobody seems to have much of a clue what this Hasbro/Universal Monopoly movie will be about, but if it wants to remain faithful to the game it'll need to be 10 hours long and cause a longstanding bitter rift within every audience who watches it.

Oh, and it'll need to be as dull as shit, too. And you thought movies based on videogames were rubbish.

The list of terrible atrocities that Michael Bay is responsible for has just got longer. If it wasn't bad enough that Michael Bay took a Transformers movie and made it into a useless knockabout comedy containing two different piss jokes and a robot who speaks like a chav, he also had the temerity to make the bloody thing successful. And now we all have to live with the repercussions of that.

You see, Transformers are Hasbro toys, and now that Hasbro has seen the money that a successful movie makes, it wants to roll out movies based on just about every single Hasbro product. There's already a G.I Joe movie in the pipeline, and yesterday Hasbro announced a six-year deal with Universal to make at least four movies based on its catalogue. And one of the first movies to be made is, we wish this was a joke, Sir Ridley Scott's Monopoly. Variety reports:

The deal was announced by U chairman Marc Shmuger, co-chairman David Linde and Hasbro chief operating officer Brian Goldner. Like "G.I. Joe," several Hasbro branded properties have gone the development route as features over the years. The property with the most current momentum is "Monopoly," which Ridley Scott and Scott Free have been developing… "This deal gives Universal access to some of the greatest brands in the world," Shmuger and Linde said in a statement. "Hasbro's portfolio of products has tremendous emotional resonance with children and adults."

And you know what emotional resonance means, right? It means we'll go and see any old shit slid in front of us so long as even indirectly reminds of of our faded youth. Ace!

So if Hasbro's first movie with Universal is Monopoly, then what are the other three? Looking likely is a Stretch Armstrong movie, which actually we'd be quite happy to see so long as a) it starred Matthew McConaughey and b) he actually dislocated his shoulder for real very time he was called upon to stretch.

Other than that, who knows? Hasbro is a big brand. There might be a Boggle movie, a Guess Who movie, Risk movie, a Pictionary movie, a Tonka truck movie or – if we get the petition going now, a movie based around that Hasbro electric toothbrush that plays U Can't Touch This when you brush your teeth.

The possibilities are endless. And almost exclusively dreadful.

Read more:

Universal pacts with Hasbro – Variety 

Although, to be be fair, that isn't because State Of Play is a world-class movie in the making; it's because Brad Pitt stropped off production recently, right before it was due to start filming. But now, with Universal planning to sue Brad Pitt for the walk-out, State Of Play needs a new leading man, and fast. Step forward Russell Crowe, who Universal has been desperately wooing all weekend. Of course, Russell Crowe is a notoriously safe pair of hands, and won't demand constant script changes like Brad Pitt reportedly did, apart from requesting that his character performs a 25-minute multi-stanza poem about the fickle nature of material success right in the middle of things.

And that 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts performs the State Of Play title music.

And that the whole thing gets called Russell Crowe's State Of Play and is set in prehistoric times, and that Edward Norton's character is replaced by an otter in a baseball cap.

So the fall-out to Brad Pitt leaving State Of Play has begun. To recap, Brad Pitt left State Of Play because he kept clashing with director Kevin McDonald over the quality of the script, something that couldn't be changed because of the continuing writers' strike. We're assuming that the changes Brad Pitt wanted included scenes of Brad Pitt riding along a deserted beach topless on a motorbike at sunset with the unmistakable sound of Whitesnake in the background, but we can't be sure of that, so don't quote us.

Anyway, by walking out of State Of Play, Brad Pitt has caused a right royal mess behind the scenes. Filming of State Of Play is ready to go, and if it doesn't get moving soon, then its star-flecked cast of Edward Norton, Helen Mirren and Rachel McAdams will be forced to abandon it too and the whole thing could go under.

So while Universal edges closer towards suing Brad Pitt – who, let's not forget, also walked out of production of The Fountain and constantly fought with the director of The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford – it's also busy trying to get Russell Crowe to jump into Brad Pitt's vacant spot.

Thanks to American Gangster being that rare occurrence – a recent Russell Crowe film that people want to watch – Russell Crowe is back in demand as an actor again. In March he begins filming Nottingham, the Ridley Scott-directed story of Robin Hood with the Sheriff Of Nottingham as the goodie, so if he agrees to fill in on State Of Play, filming will have to kick into gear pretty sharpish.

But this is all just speculation, because Russell Crowe hasn't agreed to be in State Of Play just yet. If negotiations fall through then Universal might also approach Johnny Depp or Tom Hanks, although these two actors are less desirable because they don't especially want the State Of Play lead to either assume an offputtingly unrealistic cockney accent or a mullety haircut that looks like it's made of plastic eels. So at this rate expect Brad Pitt's State Of Play role to be filled by man with the parrot from the Admiral Car Insurance adverts.

Read more:

Universal Seeks Crowe For Play – Variety