Margot Robbie Sims Movie In The Works, Once Someone Adds Ladder Back To The Pool

Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap has reportedly tapped Loki series director Kate Herron to direct a movie adaptation of The Sims.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, LuckyChap will produce the film in partnership with Vertigo Entertainment. Electronic Arts, the publisher that owns The Sims, will reportedly be involved as well. (At this juncture, you can make your jokes about in-movie DLC and expansion packs in the comments. Get it out of your system — I know you want to — and then we’ll continue.)

The Sims is, of course, the wildly popular series of life simulation games originally created by Maxis. The games involve creating a digital person or family and guiding them through the travails of everyday life — finding a job, falling in love, starting a family, and even death. It’s been one of EA’s most reliable cash cows for over 20 years, a never-ending production line of expansions. item packs and community-made mods keeping the series alive in perpetuity.

All of which makes it an especially tricky proposition for a movie adaptation. How does one go about translating a game like The Sims into a 2-hour film with broad appeal? Vertigo producer Roy Lee has previously worked on some tough-but-successful adaptations in the past, including The Lego Movies, and LuckyChap turned its pitch for a Barbie movie into a billion-dollar global sensation. If anyone can figure it out, it seems they’ve got the team to do it.

But will the Sims movie depict the notable acts of bastardry that players hold so dear? This is an important question, critical to the film’s success. Will the main character discover that their pool stairs have mysteriously vanished the moment they dive in? That the basement door, open long enough for them to walk through, has also disappeared, leaving them to die of starvation? Will they set a baby on fire and go on the internet, as is tradition? Burn the house down after trying to cook a basic meal for one? Get stuck in a pathfinding loop and piss themselves in the living room?

Here’s my real pitch though, and hear me out on this one: the whole movie should be spoken in Simlish with English subtitles. Forcing a group of beautiful actors to become fluent in a deliberately absurd, gibberish language would be very funny to me personally.

Image: EA, Getty Images, Frazer Harrison, Kotaku Australia