Everyone loves a good origin story, which is why most superhero movies waste half of their running time on the Waynes getting murdered or Krypton blowing up. Origin stories aren’t just for superheroes, though, and Deadline is reporting that production company Big Beach is developing a dramatization of the backstory behind Monopoly—which is apparently “the most popular board game in history,” especially among people who like to spend endless hours slowly hating their family more and more. The film will be mostly based on Mary Pilon’s The Monopolists, which told “the unknown story” behind the creation of the game. (Basically, a woman named Elizabeth Magie invented a game that was meant to satirize slumlords and evil business tycoons, then she sold the rights to Parker Brothers, which dropped the game’s message and made it “fun” instead.) This movie will combine Magie’s story with that of an economist named Ralph Anspach, who was sued by Parker Brothers when he made a game called Anti-Monopoly (as told in his book, The Billion Dollar Monopoly (R) Swindle).
This project is unrelated to the other Monopoly movie that’s in development, with that one apparently set up to be more of an adaptation of the game’s plot. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to us either.