Really?

You know what would be a great idea? A movie version of Where's Waldo. Especially now about ten years after most people stopped giving a crap about Where's Waldo. Really, this can't fail, especially after the hugely successful screen adaptation of another 90s fad called Magic Eye Poster -- The Movie.

According to Variety, this is exactly what's happening. Not only did Universal Studios go out of its way to acquire the rights for a Where's Waldo movie but...

U and Chris Meledandri's family film unit have acquired screen rights to turn the "Where's Waldo?" book series into a live-action family pic. Deal was worth high-six against seven figures. Meledandri will produce.

I guess all that news you hear about a recession and lean times is a load of utter crap since the only way I can figure that this would be possible is if the bank called Universal and said, "You all have so much money that it's overloaded our vault. You need to spend some of it NOW!"

Quality-wise, this should be on the same scale as movies based on video games and the number of good movies based on video games is exactly none. Hell, video game movies start off with more of a story than Where's Waldo. Even the recent godawful Street Fighter movie had characters and situations at least loosely based on a simplistic video game story. What does Waldo have? He hides in a crowd of colorful characters for some indeterminate reason. Where do you even start from there?

Probably they'll do something lame like Waldo steals some evidence that could put away a local crime boss and has to hide for 90 minutes while they try to get it back. If they really want to make me enthusiastic for this project, they could have Waldo hiding from God. Those damn Waldo posters are always shown from a sky high perspective anyway so it would make sense. They could be one of those lucrative Christian/crossover movies like Passion of the Christ or the porn version Ass-ion of the Christ (very popular among Christians because, though there was loads of graphic sex, they always said afterward that what they did was wrong). Maybe Waldo is jacking off and God tells him that pleasuring yourself is a sin but Waldo doesn't want to hear it so he keeps finding increasingly ingenious hiding places but, in the end, you can't hide from God. In the end, Waldo embraces God's love and promises that, from now, on, he will only have sex with a woman in the missionary position for the purposes of procreation under the holy covenant of marriage.

There you have it, Universal. If you're interested in optioning this idea, just let me know. I also have ideas to make movies about Spuds MacKenzie, the Macarena and all kids of stuff that was popular in the 90s. We'll make a fortune.