Everybody loves a movie about toys and board games, right? That’s the assumption producer Randall Emmett is making, anyway. We’ve already been graced with the presence of a Battleship and a Ouija movie, and now it seems like a Monopoly-based movie is definitely headed our way too. What’s more, the film will begin shooting this summer.
Board game films haven’t necessarily blown the doors off of theaters. While some were impressed with Battleship (and some really weren’t), Ouija didn’t make much of an impact on any moviegoers. However, there seems to be quite a lot more excitement around a Monopoly movie. In fact, there was even a brief period, as Collider reports, that Ridley Scott talked about potentially directing. While there haven’t been any confirmations for director or cast just yet, there is a working short list of filmmakers and Emmett said that we can expect a big cast and director announcement at the beginning of February.
While we don’t have cast or director names yet, and we don’t even know who is currently working on the script, we do know that quite a long time has been spent crafting the board game film. In fact, the writers of Monopoly were working on this script for about nine months before they came up with a draft they actually like. Nine months is approximately the amount of time it take to complete one game of Monopoly, so that certainly seems like a good amount of time. The movie is said to have a bit of a Goonies feel to it, centering around a cast of mostly children with a treasure map who are being chased by an adult. THe production is expected to shoot in Georgia or Louisiana, with some exterior work to be done in Atlantic City for the Boardwalk.
Admittedly there have certainly been some surprises from various toy or ride-themed movies like the LEGO Movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Transformers (and we have the promising Tomorrowland headed our way as well), but there have also been movies like the aforementioned Ouija and Battleship. Monopoly is certainly a wildly successful game, but I’m not terribly certain how that will translate to film. The idea of a rollicking, treasure map-infused, family adventure movie is certainly cool, but it needs to have a great foundation. I’m not sure the game of Monopoly offers that. That being said, Monopoly is one of those games that can easily adapt to lots of different environments--I mean you can get Street Fighter Monopoly, Doctor Who Monopoly, a Spongebob Monopoly, even the mmmbopin’ band Hanson has their own version of Monopoly--so maybe the game’s flexibility made for some really creative screenwriting.
We will have to wait for the big cast and director announcement in February to see what they have in store for us with this Monopoly movie. Hopefully it won’t turn out how most games of Monopoly do, with everyone excited about the idea at the beginning, but about one hour into it, everyone is frustrated and ready to be done with the game forever.
