• The Wall Street Journal , Tuesday, July 1, 2008 10:45 AM

Hasbro and Universal Studios will be rolling the dice together on a number of classic Parker Brothers board games -- including Monopoly, Candy Land and Ouija -- in a deal that departs from typical collaborations between toy companies and Hollywood.

In the arrangement, Hasbro is licensing the rights to the name, characters and themes of its board games to Universal, which pays for the production and gets the box-office receipts. Hasbro gets the toy tie-ins and rebates a small part of the sales to Universal. Little upfront money changes hands. Meanwhile, Hasbro is interviewing potential directors, assembling a creative team and building an office in Los Angeles on the Universal lot.

The risk to Hasbro is lowered -- and it also gets rights to creative input on the movies to insure that they stay true to the "mythology of the brand," says Brian Goldner, Hasbro's CEO, who received a credit in last year's "Transformers" -- on which Hasbro has the toy rights -- for the hours he spent on the set consulting on the story line and theme.

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