Lionsgate persists with decade-long effort to make a “Monopoly” movie
America’s favorite board game is proving a tricky subject for a feature film.
Lionsgate — no doubt buoyed by the success of “Michael,” the biggest film in the studio’s history and now the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time — is pressing on with its mission to get a “Monopoly” movie off the ground, reportedly enlisting two different writing teams to work on separate versions of the film.
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The latest move to bring on two writing partnerships, one of which penned “Dumb Money” while the other wrote “A Minecraft Movie,” shows that Lionsgate thinks the idea of a “Monopoly” movie still has legs more than 10 years after the studio first started the project with the screenwriter behind “The Truman Show” in 2015.
Like any good Hollywood story, Lionsgate’s efforts have seen all manner of twists and turns since then, having explored various treatments, secured exclusive rights after a 2023 deal with Hasbro, and even brought Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap production company onboard after its blowout success with “Barbie.”
On paper, a movie based on America’s most played board game (an impressive fact considering we’re a century on from its initial inception) could be a 2026 cinematic slam dunk — likely kid-friendly and based on beloved IP.
Indeed, a YouGov survey published last week revealed America to be a nation of dealmakers, with just 5% of US adults reporting that they’ve never played “Monopoly,” compared to the 53% who’ve played it “many times.”
Still, perhaps Lionsgate might be right to take its time around translating the board game to the big screen if the 2012 movie “Battleship,” based loosely on the game of the same name, which came in fourth in the YouGov ranking, is anything to go by. Universal Pictures sank an estimated $300 million into the feature all told, only for the film to fetch just $25 million on its very disappointing domestic debut.
Perhaps an indie horror take on the game, no doubt helmed by a star of social media, might be a safer bet for Lionsgate in the current cinematic landscape...
