MONOPOLY Origin Movie is Going Into Development

The classic board game Monopoly is getting its very own origin film. Big Beach production company is developing the film project which is based on the non-fiction book by Mary Pilong, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game. 

I didn’t realize there was so much drama behind this game. Just reading the description for the book is absolutely fascinating. Who would have thought there would have been so much drama over a silly game?

The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins.

Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily--and richly--ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord's Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly. Her game--underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today--was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt's famed Brain Trust. 

A fascinating social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly's real-life winners and losers.

The movie will also use another book by Ralph Anspach called The Billion Dollar Monopoly (R) Swindle, which tells the story from his perspective.

This movie sounds more interesting than the one that’s being made that is based on the game itself.