Hot item: Margot Robbie is one of the many people who tried to turn Monopoly into a blockbuster Photo: JULIAN SIMMONDS
When in In 1904, feminist socialist Elizabeth Magee created what would become the board game Monopoly, which she intended as a warning against the evils of unbridled capitalism. It's ironic that the most unchecked capitalist industry of all, Hollywood, has spent the last 15 years or so trying to turn its creation – originally called The Landlord's Game, later relaunched as Monopoly – into a blockbuster.
After her. Plastic and fantastical Barbie, Margot Robbie is the latest to roll the dice on Monopoly. In a statement announcing the project, her production company LuckyChap said that “Monopoly is the ultimate property, a fully intended pun” that has “resonated around the world for generations.”
But despite the good vibrations it generated among amateur rent-a-dollars gathered around the kitchen table for decades, bringing Monopoly to the screen was a conundrum the movie business couldn't solve. In 2008, it was announced that Ridley Scott, and no one else, was collaborating with Universal Pictures on a Monopoly film based on a story by There's Something About Mary producer Frank Beddor.
Monopoly mastermind Margot Robbie Photo: Invision
There was also something about Monopoly that was damn hard to put into film. “Monopoly” was part of publisher Hasbro's broader campaign to adapt major franchises to the screen, a strategy that also included the 2012 film “Battleship” and Michael Bay's “Transformers” series. But while huge, brutal robots were ready-made blockbuster fodder, Scott struggled with Monopoly, a largely abstract game about acquiring real estate and paying sky-high rents.
Beddor's script took the game in an unexpected direction – more Alice in Wonderland than Pass and Go Collect £200. His main idea was to use Monopoly to criticize gentrification. Our hero is Chuck Nash, a loner obsessed with Monopoly who falls asleep with one of the Chance cards in his hands.
The card is magical! Chuck awakens in Monopoly City, an alternate dimension similar to the Monopoly game board, in which the famous Uncle Pennybags (with a top hat and a thick cat mustache) appears in various guises.
Chuck also meets the evil Parker Brothers (the publishers of Monopoly before Hasbro acquired it). They want to take over the real world. However, to gain access to our universe, they need to create a “monopoly” in their board game. Only Chuck can stop the brothers from gentrifying the area and evicting the locals (including a character who looks suspiciously like his old romantic interest).
Although the idea sounds stupid. Ridley Scott felt this was the perfect opportunity to criticize rampant greed. The eureka moment, he recalls, was the realization that he didn't have to physically reproduce the game on screen.
“We had a hard time at first because my head was like, 'Somehow I need to integrate the game. Should I show a game where people are running around on a board, with big houses and funny top hats and stuff like that?” [Hasbro] said no. We just want a movie. And it makes things a lot easier.”
The theme will be unbridled greed, not rolling dice and running around the board. Scott intended it to be his version of the edgy '80s comedy Trading Places, in which Eddie Murphy plays a street hustler manipulated by two crazy billionaires.
Ridley Scott in 2013. Photo: Kobal/REX/Shutterstock
“It's about greed…Greed becomes, hopefully, hysterically funny,” Scott said. “You know, if you hover over Central Park at night in a helicopter and look down, you're right in the middle of the park, it looks like a Monopoly board.” It is green, illuminated, surrounded by the most expensive real estate in the world – and that’s where we’ll start.”
That's where he ended up. He described his Monopoly as a “bloodbath.” It was really bad behavior.” Shockingly, however, Hasbro has turned pale from its collaboration with the Blade Runner director in the fight against unbridled capitalism. Instead, in 2015, it was announced that Bafta-winning writer, producer and director Andrew Niccol (The Truman Show, Gattaca) would pen the new script.
Niccol's Monopoly will be a family novel about “a child… who uses both chance and community to build his fortune.” The inspiration was not Karl Marx, but the cult 1980s adventure film The Goonies, about a group of teenagers who get into a series of Indiana Jones-style scrapes while searching for hidden treasure.
“It's perfect. analogous to what we hope Monopoly will be,” said producer Randall Emmett. “It's a treasure map… It's a family adventure movie.”
Scene from Barbie Photo: Jaap Buitendijk
But the world wasn't ready for the adventure of a Goonies-themed board game and was once again left in limbo. Then, five years ago, it was announced that comedian Kevin Hart would star in Monopoly – he had experience starring in big films with his appearance in the Jumanji reboot.
No details on Hart's Monopoly were never disclosed and the deal fell through. Meet Robbie, riding high on the success of Barbie, which managed to simultaneously poke fun and pay homage to the source material.
However, there is an important difference between the two brands. Barbie is produced by Mattel, which has been largely open to a provocative approach to its iconic doll (and now continues to produce blockbusters based on Hot Wheels, Uno and Thomas the Tank Engine).
Hasbro, by contrast, has a history of tight control over their property. Robbie may well be charming the costumes to get her Monopoly movie greenlit. But in Hollywood there is no such thing as a get-out-of-jail card, and there's a good chance that, like Scott and Hart, Robbie will struggle to make it big and get his project off the ground.
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