When it was said several weeks back that Ridley Scott was making a movie based on the boardgame Monopoly, we outright didn't believe it. It sounded like one of those stories where 'a source' heard Scott was 'circling the project' and was 'in talks', when in fact he'd merely once played the boardgame and also happened to be a director. It sounds about as plausible as Martin Scorsese directing a Paris Hilton biopic or Stephen Sommers mounting a three-hour ode to the tanginess of cheese. But it is confirmed true.
Scott recently spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the movie and had the following to say:
"Monopoly is still the most popular board game -- I might be misquoting! -- in the world. So it's really finding the universe for that game. Because clearly it ought to be humorous and for the family -- the funny way it brings out, particularly when your uncle suddenly gets Park Lane and -- in England, we have Park Lane, Mayfair and Barclay Square, what's it in America? Park and Madison? So you watch people change. You're witness to Jekyll and Hyde. Somewhere in that is a hysterically amusing and I think rather exciting film."
As reasons to make a film, it stills seems a touch flimsy and lacking in plot, but Scott's a director who's made numerous classics out of plots that boil down to a sentence: 'There's a crew on a spaceship with a hidden alien', 'Harrison Ford hunts mutinous humanoid robots in very low-level lighting', 'A gladiator's wife and son have been killed by the emperor and he's right narked about it'. So maybe he can turn this into something. Presumably we'll shortly see a raft of boardgame movies getting the greenlight. While that fills us with utter dread, we'd totally watch Hungry Hungry Hippos: The Movie.