There’s a Battleship movie on the horizon, a film based on the game Risk on its way, Cluedo has already been made into a glorious film, and when we wrote up the news that Ridley Scott was working with Hasbro to bring about a big screen version of the game Monopoly there was a due sense of disbelief.
Scott is making waves at the moment with his 3D Alien prequels, but he is still looking ahead to rolling the dice as the studios look to make money on the familiarity of the board game brands.
Unlike the movie adaptation of Cluedo, released under its American name Clue, Monopoly has a shoe, a top hat and a dog joining Uncle Moneybags as only potential characters, so Scott, and the script (to be written by Pamela Pettler, who previous work includes Monster House, Corpse Bride and 9) will understandably be looking at the bigger world and what Scott is working on now is how to fit the concept and iconography of the board game within it.
Kicking off the press tour for his Russell Crowe starring Robin Hood ComingSoon spoke to the director about the initial work on the project, here’s what came of the conversation,
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…It’s [going to be] a comedy.
It’s a certainty that Scott knows far more about movie making than Hasbro, so in order for the film to succeed Scott will need to be given as free a rein as possible. This won’t be the last board game movie, but if Scott has his way then it may well be one of the best.
