A few years ago, my friends and I took part in a weekly themed activity night. Each week for three years, we all got together for a few hours of fun.

Theme Nights were budget-friendly affairs, designed to offer a mix of food, games and entertainment and most importantly, a break from the real world. In this post I am going to explain how we created a movie game night, with a few photos (taken in March 2015) to illustrate the event.

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The Movie Game night

Movie Game Night 1

This theme was inspired by an old Children’s BBC TV show called The Movie Game – a gameshow all about movies! Playing in teams, the object of the game was to answer movie-related trivia in order to advance around a game board (set out like a film roll).

Using this idea as the central premise of the night, our The Movie Game night recreated the game (on the cheap) and added a special prize for the winner – a screening of their favourite movie at the end of the game.

The game and the movie, along with some food in between, provided plenty of entertainment for this particular evening and remains one of my favourite Theme Nights.

Movie Game Night 2

And now for the disclaimer: I don’t work for the BBC or anyone involved with the original version of The Movie Game – which was an awesome show. Our version of the game was recreated as a one-off, simply for fun.

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How to play The Movie Game

The Movie Game was pretty simple to play, but did require a fair bit of prep work ahead of the night. The biggest task was creating a series of floor tiles that could make up the board. The game also required many, many movie-themed questions and three mini-challenges.

The main game: Taking it in turns, the teams had to answer movie-based questions in order to progress across the board. If they answered the question correctly, they were able to progress one tile. If they answered incorrectly, they had to remain where they were.

Mini games: As players progressed, they had the opportunity to land on special mini-game tiles, which allowed everyone to step away from the game board to take part in a special challenge. These challenges were movie-related mini games (an observation round, a word search etc), where the teams went head-to-head. The winners of the mini-challenges were allowed to progress three spaces on the board.

The winner of The Movie Game was the first team to make it to the finish line. The winning team got to choose their favourite movie to watch during the remainder of the evening.

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What you will need for The Movie Game

  • A collection of 30+ floor tiles
  • A set of movie-related questions (make sure you have plenty of questions)
  • Three mini-challenges (word search, puzzles etc)
  • A movie for the winning team to watch

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How to create the floor tiles

The tiles were simply bits of card, crudely designed to resemble individual frames from a film roll. Some of the tiles included a number (ranging from 1 – 30), while some were simply left blank.

On three of the tiles I included a star or an icon, to indicate a mini-game. I also decorated some of the tiles using movie props (pop corn boxes etc).

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This game took a fair bit of preparation, but it largely involved compiling some movie questions and creating the floor tiles. Once this was done, I simply had to come up with three easy-to-play mini games.

The cost?

Well, the questions and mini-games cost nothing, so it was just the cost of the pens and paper for the floor tiles (plus a little bit of basic decoration). I mean, seriously, does it look like I spent much money on this?

The game, plus the movie provided enough entertainment for around 3-4 hours. This could have easily been extended with a bit of music and a few drinks (a post-screening after party?). Now tell me that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun?

So, what do you think? Fancy trying this one yourself? If you do, why not get your friends to dress up as a film character? Make a night of it!

I hope you feel inspired by this post.

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