HOLLYWOOD When Chicago and Hairspray producers Neil Meron and Craig Zadan were looking for their next big movie musical last year, the two ended up in what would seem like an unlikely place: the El Segundo, Calif., headquarters of Mattel Inc.

The duo found their inspiration in the prototypes for an as-yet unreleased line of monster dolls from the toy manufacturer.

Welcome to Hollywoods latest gold rush.

Movie studio development slates are filling up with projects based on well-known toys and games. Some high-profile projects in the works include ones based on the classic video game Asteroids, Lego building blocks, the View-Master toy, dolls Barbie and Stretch Armstrong, and board games Battleship, Ouija, Monopoly and Candy Land.

The practice of adapting famous source material into films has been employed since Hollywoods early days (think 1939s Gone With the Wind.) Books, plays, short stories, comic books and video games have been adapted in large part because they offer a rich story and set of characters. The difference with many of the toys and games being turned into movies is that they come with neither of those characteristics.

In exchange for whats essentially a well-known brand name with a setting or theme and nothing more, studios are typically paying millions of dollars upfront and, should a movie get made, several percentage points of the movies gross receipts. Thats the kind of money that used to be offered only to A-list actors.

Brands are the new stars, said Universal Pictures Chairman Marc Shmuger, whose studio has optioned Asteroids from Atari Inc. and Barbie from Mattel, and has a deal to develop movies based on multiple Hasbro products. Thats what you used to pay the star, although fortunately theyre not as expensive.

Marketing: Done

As those working at and selling to studios can testify, theres a simple logic at work its what executives refer to as unaided awareness. If a movies name has immediate resonance for consumers, then the traditional first step of a marketing campaign selling the concept is taken care of.

A-list actors once served the same purpose, but their influence is waning as evidenced by the failure of recent star vehicles, including Imagine That, starring Eddie Murphy, Land of the Lost with Will Ferrell, and Jack Black in Year One.

The biggest hit of the summer was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, in which most of the characters are 1980s action figures.

In the midst of a recession and ongoing decline in DVD sales, studio executives have become increasingly cautious about investing hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and market a tent-pole film. That has spurred them to look to toy and game brands for security.

As of late, to get that tent-pole made you need an intellectual property that has a certain amount of unaided awareness just for starters, said Chris Silbermann, president of talent agency International Creative Management.

If studios are going to spend an ungodly amount of money, theyre looking for some justification that theyre not just diving into the deep unknown, said former Revolution Studios chief Joe Roth, who is producing an adaptation of the Mattel toy Max Steel for Paramount.

Nostalgia

Classic toy and game brands can also summon fond memories. As the successful ABBA musical Mamma Mia! showed, nostalgia can be a powerful force at the box office.

I think that, for me, its as much connected with the feeling evoked by a brand as it is with the brands awareness, said DreamWorks Chief Executive Stacey Snider, whose studio is developing the View-Master film. The most successful brands are those that connect on an emotional level.

The trend gained momentum with 2003s surprise hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. But unlike Disney, not every studio has a theme park full of brand names, which is why several others, particularly Universal and Paramount Pictures, have been aggressively licensing them.

We recognized that we were limited in regards to our own (intellectual property) resources internally and needed to be looking elsewhere to add some, said Shmuger.

Uncharted territory

Although the success of three Pirates and two Transformers movies, along with the decent performance of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, are promising signs, the films had other elements going for them. Pirates was a hit largely because of the Oscar-nominated performance of Johnny Depp, while Transformers and G.I. Joe had 1980s cartoons (created, ironically, to spur toy sales) from which to draw.

But the movie Battleship is sailing into truly uncharted waters as it heads toward a July 2011 release by Universal with only a two-sided board and plastic boats and pegs as inspiration.

The new state of affairs may be discouraging to those trying to sell original film ideas, but its lucrative for toy and game companies that once devoted all of their energies to simply selling the products they made.

Did I ever imagine wed be involved in a movie based on a toy? No, said Meron, whos working on the adaptation of Mattels new monster doll. (But) in this atmosphere its good for studios to know you have something easily promotable.

It wasnt that long ago that movie producers and executives only came to Mattel to pitch upcoming pictures for which they were seeking an accompanying toy line. Today, they regularly arrive in search of products with big-screen potential.

Its much more of a two-way conversation than it used to be, said Tim Kilpin, general manager for Mattel.

Major talent agencies are taking advantage of the shift. Creative Artists Agency represents Mattel, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment handles Hasbro, and ICM acts on behalf of Atari.

The video-game publisher started working with ICM early in 2009 in an attempt to reshape itself in part as a repository of intellectual property.

Atari is a pop-culture brand and our Asteroids intellectual property is known by millions, so the opportunity to extend outside of games seems very natural, Atari CEO Jim Wilson said.

Whats next? His company is already searching its library of well-known titles, which include Pong and Missile Command, to determine what it might sell to Hollywood.