‘Play-Doh’ Movie Being Moulded by ‘Big Sick’ Writer and ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Director

There’s a Play-Doh movie in development at eOne and Hasbro.

An animated feature film focused on the long-popular arts & craft modeling compound is in the works, with The Big Sick scribe Emily V. Gordon on board to pen the screenplay and filmmaker Jon M. Chu (Now You See Me 2, Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) attached to produce. As reported by Deadline, the door is open for Chu to direct the film, although nothing has been locked in on that end.

“The team looks forward to bringing the audience a moldable, pliable, iconically scented story about the importance of imagination,” Chu and Gordon said in a joint statement.

Gordon will be attached to executive produce the picture, with Jillian Share, Chanel Vidal and Steven Holster overseeing for eOne and Lance Johnson and Jane Lee overseeing for Chu’s Electric Somewhere banner.

That’s about all there is to go on for now. No word as yet on what type of animation will be used; one can imagine that the stop-motion route would fit nicely, although that’s known to be quite a lengthy and difficult endeavour to tackle. As for the “importance of imagination” mentioned in the statement, could we see something in the vein of The Lego Movie?

Gordon, who earned an Oscar nomination for writing The Big Sick alongside husband Kumail Nanjiani, co-created Apple series Little America and has penned a draft script for a live-action adaptation of Your Name (based on the hit 2016 anime film) – to be produced by J.J. Abrams.

Chu’s upcoming credits as director include a Netflix series about the Thai cave rescue of 2018; a planned animated film adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ final book, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!; and two Crazy Rich Asians follow-ups, China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems.

In case Play-Doh fans didn’t know, the brand was the focus of Play-Doh Squished, a recent IMDb TV reality competition special hosted by Sarah Hyland.


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