Monopoly Movie Starring Kevin Hart Still In Development, Says Director Tim Story [Exclusive]
Remember in the early 2010s when board game movies were going to be the next big thing in Hollywood? It seemed like Peter Berg's Michal Bay riff "Battleship" (a supremely silly film that I had fun with, I won't lie) had put the kibosh on that when it bombed at the box office in 2012. Yet, just a few months after its release, there were new reports of Hasbro moving forward with films based on "Monopoly" and "Hungry Hungry Hippos." Neither one of those has come to fruition at the time of writing this, although I still kinda want to see that "Hippos" movie personally.
As for "Monopoly," a film adaptation of the infamous classic board game — you know, the one that makes unquenchable capitalistic greed fun for the whole family! — actually predates "Battleship" all the way back to 2008. This early iteration had none other than Sir Ridley Scott attached to direct, with the filmmaker saying (circa 2010), "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." It sounds like this was shaping up to be Scott's answer to financial movies like "Wall Street" and "The Wolf of Wall Street," and I for one would've loved to check it out.
Alas, that version has since fallen by the wayside. More recently, in 2019, Tim Story came on board to direct his "Ride Along" star Kevin Hart in a "Monopoly" movie that had a previous script draft about "a young man from the game's modest Baltic Avenue on a quest to make a fortune." It turns out that iteration is still trudging along, as /Film's Ryan Scott learned while interviewing Story about his upcoming horror-comedy "The Blackening."
What would a Monopoly movie even look like?
Creatively speaking, the biggest challenge presented by board game movies is that their source material tends to be inherently plotless. And even when it does lend itself to the big screen, it's usually in the form of a generic genre film. It's why "Battleship" decide to throw, of all things, an alien invasion into a property that's all about old-fashioned naval warfare, as a way of attempting to spice things up. Similarly, there's another abandoned iteration of the "Monopoly" movie that then-producer Randall Emmett had described as a treasure-hunting family adventure in the vein of "The Goonies."
According to Tim Story, it's been especially hard finding the right cinematic hook for his take on "Monopoly." The filmmaker confirmed the film is "still in development" when Ryan asked. "It's a difficult one to find the right thing with," Story added. "So we have been talking to writers, it is still being developed, and hopefully, we'll get to a blueprint that we can kind of get something made."
When Ryan asked what a "Monopoly" movie would even look like "as a cinematic [experience]," Story admitted your guess is as good as his:
"Trust me, I wish I could tell you. That's been our problem. Really, it's one of those ideas that you can go so many different places with it. And then of course with money, finance movies are not easy to make entertaining. So there's a lot going on here and the ball keeps being moved, or I should say the basket keeps being moved. So fingers crossed, hopefully. Trust me, one day I hope I can articulate exactly what it might be."
Best of luck with that, sir. Meanwhile, "The Blackening" opens in theaters on June 16, 2023.