Variety is reporting that Universal has won the right to adapt the decades old children's book series "Where's Waldo?" into a live action feature film.  The studio will partner with Illumination Entertainment to bring the story of a dude in a striped sweater who is really hard to pick out of a crowd to the big screen - I'm guessing that the irony of building a full-length film around a character that can not be located is lost on the producers.

The striking part of this story is not that a major Hollywood studio is pursuing a familiar children's property that is devoid of any discernible plot - that description fits all of the Hasbro movie deals that have been brokered over the past year.  No, the weird part of this story is that the rights to "Where's Waldo?" were apparently won in a fierce bidding war that saw Warner Brothers lose out to Universal in a reported seven figure deal.  Considering that Waldo's greatest challenge is keeping track of his shoes from one page to the next, that is a pretty outrageous sum of money.