Frank Beddor

Not too long ago (at least it seems as such) it was announced that a Monopoly movie was going to be made by director Ridley Scott. And yesterday an article from the LA Times surfaced with an interview with Frank Beddor who will be writing the movie. Some may recognize Beddor’s name if they’ve read The Looking Glass Wars series, which is a re-imagining of the Alice in Wonderland story. In the LA Times article, Beddor talks about the plot of the movie, and well… I’ll let you read what he has to say:

“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.”

Now, I highly enjoyed the movie based on Clue, but I don’t think I can get behind this. I just see it being campy, and in a bad way. I think Clue worked because you can easily make a murder mystery movie with quirky characters that takes place in a big mansion (and having Tim Curry involved is always a plus).  But with Monopoly I think that it’ll be a stretch. I will give Beddor credit that he’s come up with an interesting take on how to make it work in a movie setting, I just doubt the final product will turn out well.

Then again maybe my pessimism will pay off later if the move does turn out good, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.

Via Aint It Cool News