Tattle: Another board game heads to the screen

WANT TO GET into the movie business?

Create a board game popular with baby boomers.

Preferably a half-century ago.

Following in the footsteps of "Clue" the upcoming "Battleship" and other toys turned cinematic properties like Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers, Adam Sandler is set to star in "Candy Land." Why didn't Tattle ever write that "Chutes and Ladders" script?

TheWrap.com reports Sandler is in final talks with Sony and Hasbro to star and produce. Kevin Lima is attached to direct, and Sandler is scheduled to write with Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Dog). In the game Candy Land, created in 1949, players, generally under age 10, make their way through the Peppermint Forest, the Gum Drop Mountains and the Lollypop Woods. As they do, they encounter Princess Frostine, Lord Licorice, Mr. Mint and King Candy.

"Candy Land" doesn't sound like an award winner, but it will probably be good for concession sales.

Paula Abdul

said yesterday she won't return to "dear friend"

Simon Cowell

's singing contest when it begins its second season later this year. Her announcement followed Monday's exits of fellow judge

Nicole Scherzinger

and host

Steve Jones

.

"I've learned through my longevity in this industry that business decisions often times override personal considerations," Abdul said in a measured statement.

Guess that means Paula will go back to managing her hedge fund.

* In a sort of related story, workaholic Ryan Seacrest is going into the TV business with radio giant Clear Channel. The company said yesterday that it is taking a minority stake in Ryan Seacrest Media, which produces "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and other Kardashian spin-offs.

In a separate deal, Clear Channel's majority investors, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, are committing $300 million to work with Seacrest's company to identify, acquire and develop innovative media companies.

Clear Channel was taken private in 2008 by Thomas H. Lee and those job creators at Bain but has struggled under the debt load created by the acquisition. The company's long-term debt reached about nearly $20 billion at the end of September.

Well-played, fellas.

* William Morrow publishers

said yesterday that Debbie Reynolds will release her tell-all tome, "Unsinkable," next year.

In the book, Reynolds will revisit important moments of her life as an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age and her role in the best movie ever made, "Singing in the Rain." She'll also re-examine the scandalous end of her first marriage in 1959, when singer Eddie Fisher left her for their best friend, Elizabeth Taylor, said Morrow in a statement.

* Adele, who had surgery on her

vocal cords last year, will perform live for the first time in five months at the Grammys, Feb. 12.

* "Visions of Ecstasy," the only

movie banned in Britain for blasphemy, was OK'd for distribution yesterday, 23 years after being outlawed. (Blasphemy was abolished as an offense in 2008. Hell, however, was not abolished, so blaspheme at your own risk.)

The experimental short film features scenes of Jesus being seduced on the cross and became a free-speech cause celebre after Britain's film censors refused to give it a rating, a requirement for legal distribution. The Board of Film Classification ruled in 1989 that a fantasy scene in which St. Teresa of Avila sexually caresses Jesus' body could constitute blasphemous libel.

But libel? Whom does it libel?

- Daily News wire services

contributed to this report.