Everyone's favourite argument-inducing, family-destroying board game Monopoly is set to bring its unique form of property management to cinemas, with owners Hasbro hoping to collect a lot more than £200 on a planned movie.
Lionsgate, the movie studio behind The Hunger Games, will finance the film, and co-produce it with Hasbro's Allspark Pictures. While there's no director attached yet, the project does have some impressive creative credentials, with Andrew Niccol, screenwriter of The Truman Show and Gattaca, penning the script.
The film's story is described as: "a boy from Baltic Avenue who uses both Chance and Community in a quest to make his fortune, taking him on a fun, adventure-filled journey. It’s about making your own luck, what makes you truly rich and, of course, avoiding Jail time!" Hasbro and Lionsgate say the all-ages film will be "visually sumptuous, heartwarming, and full of action and adventure." "Hasbro is a partner with incredible global reach, one of the most compelling brand portfolios in the world, and a signature brand in Monopoly that has multigenerational appeal," said Lionsgate co-president Erik Feig. "Andrew Niccol is the ultimate world creator. He is an inspired choice to develop this timeless property into a big, crowd-pleasing event film that will appeal to kids, families and anyone who has ever played the Monopoly game." "As we've seen with our other movies and television series, Hasbro's brands are terrific for creating engaging stories and appealing characters that speak to audiences of all ages, and together with Lionsgate we will bring Monopoly to life on the big screen," added Hasbro's chief content officer Stephen Davis. "Monopoly is one of the most popular games of all time, and it will translate into a film with tremendous global appeal and marketability."
Hasbro is in the midst of a years-long drive to turn its toy properties into movies. While the likes of the Transformers and GI Joe franchises have story backgrounds to them, giving them some pre-existing material to adapt as film plots (however terrible those movies may have been), Hasbro's push to transition its board games to the screen has always seemed a little odd. 2012's Battleship movie was an expensive flop, one that tried to take the ship-sinking guessing game and turn it into an alien invasion sci-fi showdown, while last year's Ouija -- yes, Hasbro owns ouija boards -- saw the toymaker turn its hands to the horror genre.
The Lionsgate partnership isn't even the first time Hasbro has tried to get a Monopoly movie off the ground. Back in 2008, Ridley Scott was attached to direct an adaptation. Picture that for a second -- the director of Alien and Blade Runner helming a board game movie. That version never came to pass though, and neither did a 2012 version where Scott would have been a producer instead.
There's potential for a Willy Wonka-esque slice of weirdness if this current approach materialises, or perhaps, given Niccol's track record, an allegorical look at the problems with monopolies. However, there's no window announced for the film's production or release, so this take may yet end up in Jail itself.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
