"The Sims" has no plot, no story beyond what the player creates. The "Sims" go about their daily lives, furnish their homes, build relationships, pursue careers, and even die in swimming pools. And somehow, it has been made into a movie.

Word of "The Sims" film adaptation came from The Hollywood Reporter. The production company LuckyChap and Vertigo Entertainment, co-founded by Margot Robbie, will produce the film, and Kate Herron, who directed the first season of the Disney+ series "Loki," will co-write the script.

And Electronic Arts is also involved in the project "in a creative and producing capacity." Whether series creator Will Wright will play any role is unknown, but apparently doubtful.

While an odd choice for a major film adaptation, the game's completely open-ended nature probably gives the creators a flexibility that they would not get if they were making a film based on, say, "Dead Space" or "Battlefield". Nor is the adaptation of a game without a plot unprecedented: "Battleship," for example, became a blockbuster movie in 2012. Battleship" became a blockbuster movie in 2012, and yes, it was a shitty game and lost a lot of money. But you never know unless you try, right?

(Sometimes you can figure it out before you spend $200 million on "trying," but I'm not a Hollywood studio exec, so what do I know?)

My colleague Rich Stanton also reminded me about this mess that somehow managed to be commercially successful:

That aside, there is a successful precedent for such projects: Robbie and Lucky Chap's previous project, the storyless property-based "Barbie which made truckloads of money and was nominated for eight Academy Awards. So there you have it: if you don't try, you won't know. (Sometimes.) [13]