A movie about the origins of the board game Monopoly is in the works at Big Beach Films, producer of “Little Miss Sunshine” and the upcoming Elle Fanning transgender drama “About Ray.”
Big Beach’s Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf are producing with Diane Nabatoff, based on Mary Pilon’s book “The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game.”
The book, published in February by Bloomsbury, traces back the history of the game to 1904, when anti-monopolist Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips created “The Landlord’s Game” as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. Parker Brothers began selling a variation called Monopoly in 1935 with the game based on streets in Atlantic City, N.J.
The project will also be based on Ralph Anspach’s book “The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle,” which recounts his invention of the game Anti-Monopoly.
Howard A. Rodman, who was elected president of the Writers Guild of America West last month, has been hired to write the script.
Lionsgate and Hasbro announced in July that they were teaming up to develop a Monopoly movie with Andrew Nichol on board to write. Hasbro, which owns Parker Brothers, has been attempting to develop a Monopoly film since 2009.
ICM Partners represented Pilon’s and Anspach’s books. The news about Big Beach’s Monopoly project was first reported by Deadline Hollywood.
