This year marks the 90th anniversary of Monopoly, one of the most popular board games in the world. Hollywood has been attempting to make a Monopoly movie for the better part of the last two decades, but the project has finally picked up some momentum by adding the screenwriters and directors of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.
Via The Hollywood Reporter, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein are closing their deals to write the script for Monopoly. However, their deal doesn’t appear to include an option to direct the film as well. Daley and Goldstein co-wrote Horrible Bosses, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Vacation Friends, in addition to directing Vacation, Game Night, and the upcoming Apple Studios movie Mayday.
Margot Robbie joined the Monopoly movie last year as a producer through her production company LuckyChap, which is working with Hasbro Entertainment and Lionsgate on the project. The movie doesn’t currently have any cast members attached to it.
Adapting Monopoly into a scripted format is a challenge that previous writers and directors weren’t quite able to solve. Alien director Ridley Scott was attached to direct Monopoly in 2008, back when the film rights were at Universal Pictures. A few years after Universal stopped work on the film, the project was picked up by Lionsgate. In 2019, Monopoly was being reworked as a Kevin Hart vehicle with Barbershop and Fantastic Four director Tim Story attached to helm it. But that iteration of the film did not go forward.
A new edition of the Monopoly board game was released earlier this year, which includes expansion packs. Monopoly has also been adapted as a video game numerous times, including the mobile title Monopoly Go! and Ubisoft’s Monopoly on PC and modern consoles.