Ridley Scott's MONOPOLY Movie gets 2 Screenwriters

Even though Universal Pictures has dropped Ridley Scott's Monopoly movie, the project is not dead. Scott and Hasbro are moving forward with the film production of the popular board game and have hired  Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to write the script.

It's hard to argue with this choice because these guys have written some pretty sold films that include Tim Burton's Ed Wood, People vs. Larry Flynt, and most recently adapted Stephen King's 1408. The story for the film was written by Frank Beddor and here are some previously released story details for the film,

I wrote the story that got Hasbro excited and I attached Ridley Scott. The project was underway but they were in a little bit of trouble I guess and they were looking for a way to actually turn it into a movie. I had a pretty interesting take and it got Sir Ridley interested.

They have this big world and this game -- it’s the most famous board game in the world -- and it just really came out of the whole 'Alice' thing. I took the approach of thinking of the main character falling down a rabbit hole and into a real place called Monopoly City ... It was the re-engineering of 'Alice in Wonderland' that got me thinking and then with this it came around full circle and I was able to utilize that. That’s a big world. They were searching for that.

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 has to defeat them. It tries to incorporate all the iconic imageries -- a sports car pulls up, there's someone on a horse, someone pushing a wheelbarrow -- and rich Uncle Pennybags, you're going to see him as the maître d' at the restaurant and he's the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera. There's all these sight gags.

Well it was that pitch, that's where Sir Ridely got excited. After I pitched it to him, he put out his hand and said, 'What do I have to be part of this movie?' So I said, 'Do you mean you want to direct it?' And he said, 'Yeah, and I will tell you why – it’s all the things you just said and the fact that I had these epic Monopoly battles with my family when I was young.'

So far Universal has dropped three projects that they were working with Hasbro on Monopoly, Clue and Ouija. All of them are still in active development though, just not with the studio. Not sure Why Universal partnered up with Hasbro if all they were going to do was drop the project they started developing. As of right now Harbro is funding the development of the projects.

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