Films based on toys and games have been around for years, but Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie raised the bar by unlocking the full potential of a toy-based movie. With the right idea, any piece of intellectual property can be molded into meaningful, commercially viable art, which is why I’m not immediately dismissing the upcoming Monopoly movie.
Yes, you read that right—there will be a movie based on the board game Monopoly.
In April 2024, Variety reported that LuckyChap, the production company cofounded by Barbie star Margot Robbie, was teaming up with Hasbro Entertainment and Lionsgate on a live-action Monopoly movie. Few details about the movie have been shared since the announcement, but this week, Deadline reported that Lionsgate recently hired writing duo John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein to pen the script for the project.
Daley and Goldstein have made a name for themselves in the action-comedy sphere in recent years, writing Horrible Bosses, the Vacation reboot, and Vacation Friends. They also wrote and directed the criminally underrated Game Night as well as 2023’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which you can (and should!) stream on Netflix.
They even dipped their toes into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, writing the screenplay for Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming. In other words, these are precisely the two writers I’d want to attempt to turn a 90-year-old board game into a funny, timely feature film.
I’m still in awe of the fact that Daley and Goldstein managed to successfully adapt Dungeons & Dragons. Anyone who saw Dungeons & Dragons in 2000 knows how easy it is to screw up this fantasy universe. They took the fictional world seriously enough that all the characters could be silly without undermining the stakes of the story.
With Spider-Man: Homecoming, they brought fresh energy to a franchise that had already been rebooted five years earlier. Game Night, in my opinion, stands alone as the best action-comedy of the last decade. In perhaps their most impressive turn, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 didn’t ruin the legacy of the original (despite having no real reason to exist).
There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about movies and shows based on IP. That said, if there’s no stopping them, at least let the right people make them.
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