Hasbro, the second-largest toy company in the US, is set for a merger with DreamWorks’ animation arm, potentially leading to a deluge of cash-in movie hybrids, from Bop It! to Jenga

DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind the hugely successful Shrek, Madagascar and How to Train Your Dragon franchises, is in early negotiations to merge with Hasbro, the second-largest toy company in the US after Mattel.

Hasbro already has a series of toys that have proved fodder for the dream factory, including GI Joe and Transformers, whose latest film – described by the Guardian as “skull-splinteringly insensitive” – earned more than $1bn worldwide for its studio Paramount. Hasbro also has licenses to produce toys based on film franchises including Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble, while in a strong earnings call earlier this year the company attributed The Hunger Games to the popularity of its Rebelle series of Nerf bows and arrows aimed at girls.

If successful, Hasbro’s purchase would create a perfectly symbiotic match: merchandising opportunities for DreamWorks pictures furnished by Hasbro, while Hasbro provides a steady stream of potential intellectual property to mine for films – if the likes of Furreal Friends’ cuddy puppy Get Up and Go-Go can indeed be called intellectual property.

Snobbery perhaps, but the paucity of new ideas in Hollywood is leading to some shameless toy-inspired films. Hasbro’s card game Magic: The Gathering, last seen being played in a classroom that bullies weren’t aware of, is being adapted by Fox. Meanwhile, Sony is developing Hasbros’ board game Candy Land, a cornerstone of many American childhoods that treats the dice-roll board game with an almost experimental level of minimalism. My Little Pony is already being turned into a new animated movie, Battleship became a predictably formulaic action flick, while Hasbro once had a Stretch Armstrong movie being prepped, set to “find a real emotional connection and resonance”, according to its creators.

Transformers: Age of Extinction, based on Hasbro’s toy line. Photograph: Paramount/Everett/Rex

At their worst, these turn potential film art into extended infomercials – but they don’t have to be terrible. Ridley Scott was once lined up to direct a Monopoly movie about, in his words, “some horrible property scam guy”, which in the wake of the financial crisis could have been just loopy enough to work – and let’s not forget that The Lego Movie was far, far better than many expected.

So what might Hasbro tackle next? Surely their Nerf weapons are crying out to be the final scrape of the Hunger Games barrel, in the wake of The Maze Runner, Divergent et al – but any film must be set in a world where light retinal injuries from foam darts can prove instantly fatal. The infernal compulsiveness of Bop It! could be perfect for a study of human obsession starring Russell Crowe, with Jack Black as the voice of Bop It! Jenga could form the core of Christopher Nolan’s next inquiry into layered reality, The Game of Life could be the perfect sequel project for Terrence Malick, and Operation could either go for a Saw-style splatter-fest or a melancholy Ron Howard medical drama about a surgeon with Parkinson’s disease.

Will we eventually end up exhausting every toy and game, until we’re left with Bela Tarr making a seven-hour film about the perpetual struggle of Snap? Perhaps. And with each new adaptation, Hollywood further underlines just how un-interactive its product is, and lacking in playful imagination its producers can be.