The Monopoly movie has its screenwriters, now it needs a plot

Hollywood's love of mining intellectual property is not new, and it has grown more intense, and arguably more craven, in the last two decades. Studios have also attempted to replicate every phenomenon that emerges and to do what other studios have just scored with. Sometimes, it's the same studio trying to strike magic twice. "Barbie" did not invent the film based on a toy. However, the idea had fallen out of style, in part because these movies were rarely successful. Other than the "Transformers" franchise, successes were infrequent, and those movies are bugnuts Michael Bay action flicks with giant robots fighting. 

The two highest-grossing movies of 2023 were "Barbie" and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie." Both made over a billion dollars worldwide. The latter has opened the once-skittish Nintendo up to the idea of more adaptations. It cleansed the palate of the Bob Hoskins film from the '90s that, if we recall correctly, was put on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity. 

"Barbie" didn't just make a ton of movie for Warner Bros. and Mattel, but also garnered prestige. It fully captured the zeitgeist, and naturally some studio executives took a straightforward "toys=money" lesson from that.

Thus, why not make a movie based on an instantly-recognizable board game? Other than the fact it has nothing in the way of a plot so you are only using it for I.P. recognition, that "Battleship" movie was hot trash, and "Clue" took over a decade to become a cult hit, of course. This Monopoly film could be a canary in a coal mine for the toy adaption, and especially the board game adaptation (though, again, the very notion of a movie "adapting" a board game like Monopoly feels like misappropriation of the English language). If it's a big hit, we will assuredly see more of this. Get ready for the Grape Escape movie. Crocodile Dentist? Dwayne Johnson's agent is waiting.

If it doesn't succeed, though, studios may get cold feet about such projects. To that end, Daley and Goldstein had a movie come out in 2023, the same year as "Barbie," that they wrote and directed: "Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves."

That movie had Chris Pine as a lead and was adapting a toy/game that has actual characters and plot-friendly elements. It's also pretty fun, even if you have zero clue about anything "Dungeons & Dragons" related. The movie also made $208.2 million off of a budget of $150 million, which means that when you factoring in marketing it assuredly did not make its money back.

There is a long way to go from this point to end product, but if you have any interest in the way the wind blows in Hollywood, a Monopoly movie getting notable screenwriters and getting Robbie's company on board to produce feels significant. This film will legitimately impact the enthusiasm for toy-and-game-based movies in Hollywood. With comic books strip mined, this is the I.P. space that intrigues studios the most. The Monopoly movie could send the concept straight to movie jail. Not passing Go and not collecting $200, of course.

(h/t The Hollywood Reporter)