A while back it was announced that Ridley Scott was interested in directing a movie version of Monopoly. This raised a few questions. Firstly, why would the director of Alien and Blade Runner be interested in a board game movie? And secondly, what the hell would it be about? Well producer Frank Beddor recently revealed details of the story he pitched that got Ridley Scott interested.
From the L.A Times:
I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’”
“He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy.”
He continues to say that he came up with this story a years ago and it may be different now as Pamela Pettner is currently working on her version of script, which i’m happy about. ‘Waking up in Monopoly land’ isn’t very creative at all. I hope he didn’t get paid for it as the dog board piece could probably have come up with something better.
