'Fruit Ninja' Is The Next Mobile Game Becoming A Movie, Cue That Heavy Sigh

This past weekend, The Angry Birds knocked Captain America: Civil War out of the top box office spot like the superheroes had stolen their eggs. The animated movie raked in about $39 million for the #1 spot, but before that success had even been locked down, another mobile game was already revealed to get the big screen treatment.

A Fruit Ninja movie is now in development, based on the hit mobile game of the same name that debuted in 2010 and has since been downloaded over a billions times. But don't expect another animated movie like Angry Birds received, because this is going to be a live-action family comedy. How wonderful.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed the Fruit Ninja movie is being produced by Tripp Vinson by way of his Vinson Films production banner. They've hired J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani to write the script. The duo is pretty new to the screenwriting scene, with a film called How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack in development, based on the book of the same name. The two also previously wrote for the 59th Emmy awards broadcast in 2007.

Even though we've gotten used to studios snatching up brand names to turn into movies, this is one of those situations that's annoying because Fruit Ninja is a mobile game that doesn't have a story. The game has players slicing flying fruits for points and avoiding slicing bombs for negative points. If you slice multiple fruits at the same time, you get a bonus. That's pretty much it. But when you have a title that's the second highest selling iOS game of all time, of course a studio is going to want to cash in on its popularity.

Fruit Ninja seems like it would be better suited for animation, but a live-action comedy sounds like it would be just plain silly. It's hard to tell since again, there's no real story. But we said the same thing about The LEGO Movie and that turned out all right. That was like capturing lightning in a bottle though, and it's not easy to do something that great.

No director or cast have been hired yet, so whenever that happens, we might have a better idea of what to expect from this project. Until then, I'm very skeptical that this is going to be something worth watching, especially since The Angry Birds Movie isn't exactly anything groundbreaking. Stay tuned for more.