While talking to Ridley Scott about his new action-adventure Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, the director told ComingSoon.net more about bringing the board game Monopoly to the big screen.
We asked Scott if the game would be referenced in the movie at all other than the title. “Yes, absolutely,” he said. “It’s a Hasbro film and they have the game. That was a tough thing to crack in terms of the screenplay because first off, many would want to integrate literally the shaking of the dice and the throwing of the dice into the board. I couldn’t really get past that. I wanted to just make a movie about the idea of greed. I told them you know your game can turn your sweetest, dearest aunt into a demon – a nightmare of greed. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
We also asked, given the current economic situation, whether the project will have a tougher look at the real estate market. “Completely. It’s a blood bath. It was really bad behavior. It’s [going to be] a comedy,” Scott added.
The film is set up at Universal Pictures with a script by Pamela Pettler. A start date has not been announced.
Producer/author Frank Beddor previously revealed that the story he pitched for the movie featured 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.”
We’ll have to see how much of that story remains in Pettler’s screenplay.
