Monopoly enthusiasts will one day receive their money’s worth with the unknown backstory to their beloved game. Deadline reports that Big Beach’s Marc Turtletaub and Peter Saraf will produce alongside Diane Nabatoff (Dancing in Jaffa) and have set Howard A. Rodman to adapt not one, but a pair of books: Mary Pilon’s best selling non-fiction book The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game and Ralph Anspach’s The Billion Dollar Monopoly (R) Swindle.
Gist: This is about the unknown David and Goliath story of S.F. State Universal economist Ralph Anspach, who invented the game Anti-Monopoly as a cry against rampant capitalism, and was promptly sued by Parker Brothers and was shored up against the game invented by Elizabeth Magie, a stenographer who hatched The Landlords Game to lash out against slumlords and other monopolists of the early 20th Century. She sold her rights for $500, with no residuals.
Worth Noting: Big Beach is currently in production with Jeff Nichols’ fifth feature film, Loving.
Do We Care?: Fans of Rodman’s screenplay treatment for Tom Kalin’s Savage Grace, we’re expecting the antithesis of the corporate bully biopic trademark and patent infringement hell we witnessed in Flash of Genius and Big Eyes. we’re expecting darker, more inflammatory matter with one Elizabeth Magie (creator of The Landlords) as the lead protagonist.
