Last year, 20th Century Fox optioned the movie rights to The Sims. After all, a franchise that big can't simply go unoptioned, can it? Note that "optioning" is in no way the same thing as "making a movie". It's just the studio's way of saying, "We call dibbs (i.e. pay a wad of money) on this until we can figure out what, if anything, we can do with it".

Fox is obviously still in the "figure out what, if anything, we can do with it" stage, based on the following comments from producer John Davis while he was doing press for an unrelated movie:

John Davis: Tom Rothman, the Chairman of Fox said to me, “How are you going to take this incredible piece of IP and make it into a movie?” Right? Because most games aren’t movies, so this is the way I did it: The Sims, as you know, you can control your imaginary world, right? And our movie, a young man, a 16 year old kid [or] a 14 year old kid and his friend get their hands on this thing called the Sims Infinity Pack, right, which kind of this very strange video game store which was there just for that moment, and seemingly wasn’t all that. But what they realize is that they can scan their world in, because this is the most life like, real Sims game ever. And as they are playing this they are all of a sudden realizing is what they are playing on the game is having an effect on the real world. So in effect, through the game, they are able to control their world. It’s wish fulfillment, and obviously it turns against them.

Collider.com: So this is a little bit of a cousin of “Weird Science” here.

John Davis: Exactly. Exactly! And definitely there will be somebody coming out of the game into the real world, like “Weird Science” did.

Collider.com: Are you thinking about making this in that kinda vein, where it’s the fun kind of aspect of it? Or are you thinking of making it a PG/PG-13 kind of. . .

John Davis: I wanna make a Amblin-esque, really fun adventure movie, because I think the third act is great, because obviously there is a nemesis, and the nemesis gets his hands on the game in the third act and he’s now set up this incredible obstacle course of incredible things that you can only do through your Sims game that our heroes have to go through before the game becomes permanent and they’re forever screwed, and they have got to defeat that nemesis. So it’s got some big great fun, adventure set pieces, and whatever their imagination is creates the world.

You might be tempted to write this off as ridiculous, but what else are you going to do with a Sims movie? You might as well just use it as the McGuffin in a family-friendly adventure. After all, what better way to appeal to the game's audience, as well as to increase the "brand awareness"? So while I have little interest in seeing something like this, it sounds to me like they're on the right track.