Entertainment
The Rubik’s Cube Is Getting ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Treatment
Remember “The Queen’s Gambit”? In late 2020, the acclaimed Netflix miniseries (based on a novel) captured the attention of millions, causing sales of chess sets to skyrocket.
In an attempt to mine IP wherever they can find it, Hollywood is searching for other classic games to turn into content. Next up? The Rubik’s Cube.
Although nowhere near as old as chess, the Rubik’s Cube has the same patina of intellectual sophistication yet accessibility. So it should be no surprise that a Rubik’s Cube movie is in the works.
Is this something that fans of the Hungarian toy should be excited about? I am skeptical. “The Queen’s Gambit,” after all, was an adaptation of a 40-year-old novel, written by an acclaimed author who had other such hits as “The Hustler,” “The Color of Money,” and “The Men Who Fell to Earth.”
The Rubik’s Cube movie has no such source material to work with. By the looks of it, they are going to try and reverse engineer a story based on a game. As we saw when they tried to make a movie out of the board game Battleship, this is not necessarily a good idea. On the flip side, there are examples of toys being turned into bona fide hits. The Transformers movies have earned beaucoup bucks, while “The Lego Movie” was legitimately good.
Though it looks like a blatant cash grab, maybe the Rubik’s Cube movie will surprise us. Stranger things have happened.