Nov 12, 2009 06:20 AM
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Tue Feb 9
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Monopoly the movie will be done weirdly, thanks to director Ridley Scott's science fictional plans for the board game adaptation. The good news is that Uncle Pennybags made the cut.
The LA Times has the scoop on the Monopoly movie thanks to Frank Beddor, the man who is helping develop the concept behind Scott's latest project.
So here's the set up. The story stars a loser type fella in Manhattan who sucks at selling real estate, but he's great at Monopoly. Irony! When he tries to beat the world Monopoly playing record, 70 days straight, his friends tell him he's an idiot and tease him. Words are exchanged and he throws down a chance card and goes to bed. The next day he wakes up and . . . he's in Monopoly City, where everyone pays for things in Monopoly money, and there are buckets and sports cars and everyone stands around waiting for this tiresome game of life to end but it never will, it never will. Because like the game Monopoly, Monopoly City is a tedious city where you're forced to watch one idiot spend all their colorful money buying up Park Place and Boardwalk which never works. Meanwhile the rest of the town just prays for it to be over. But forget it Jake, it's Monopoly City.
Alright I made that last part up, but the main character does wake up in Monopoly City and is forced to fight the EVIL Parker Brothers because if he beats them he wins. We don't know why and we don't really know how, but there you have it. Let's just accept that they are evil and invented a neverending game where you're forced to use a small amount of math.
Here's what Beddor says to the doubters:
Look, so much of it is about the execution. You know the visual component is going to be beautiful with Ridley. And you have all of the world editions to deal with — there are different editions of the game so the city won't be limited to the Atlantic City edition that we know in America. Ridley grew up with the British version ...
So half of us won't even get the references! I do agree to some extent, Ridley Scott is pretty amazing at what he does, and there have been other film premises we thought were ridiculous that turned out to be entertaining blockbusters. Beddor points to Pirates of the Caribbean as an example.
But on the plus side, Uncle Pennybags will be in the feature Hitchcock style, "appearing in the background as a maître d' at the restaurant and he's the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera." Which is excellent. But who should play him?
[Image via Comedy Central]
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
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