VOTD: 'Monopoly The Movie'

Several years ago, jaws dropped from coast to coast as news broke that Ridley Scott was attached to direct a movie version of the popular board game Monopoly. Since then, the Oscar-nominated director has thankfully moved on to make several other films while Monopoly remains mired in development hell. The notion of a Monopoly movie was so completely wild though, it kind of got our collective imaginations moving. What would Monopoly the Movie look like? At one point, a rumored plot description of Scott's take leaked online but it wasn't until today that we have an actual, live action representation of what this could be.

A group called Half Day Today has created a 2 minute trailer for Monopoly the Movie that's described as by director Matthew Stubstad as "a sort of 'Tron,' 'Jumanji,' 'Wall Street' and 'Inception' hybrid... hodgepodge." Check it out after the break.

Thanks to Half Day Today for alerting us to their video. It's on YouTube as well as Funny or Die. Check it out below.

In an interview with CNN (yes, the real CNN) about their trailer, Stubstad said the idea for the video was to trump (no pun intended) Hollywood by releasing the first real version of a live action Monopoly story:

Our goal was to get a trailer out before the studio [released] theirs. We wanted to make fun of how Hollywood is kind of grabbing anything they can to make a movie out of it.

He believes that viral videos like this, and though he doesn't reference it, the recent Footloose fan film we wrote about qualifies as well, are a great way for up and coming filmmakers to simultaneously catch the eye of Hollywood while sending them a message that they need to step up their game.

The game has kind of changed for directors, I feel. We kind of need these blockbuster viral videos to get noticed.

The scary thing is, as clever as Half Day Today's version of Monopoly is, its offhanded references to the game, the evil character with the mustache and obvious "money isn't everything" message, are probably what a Ridley Scott version of the film would have ended up being as well.

Do you think Ridley Scott will ever make Monopoly? Or would you rather see the feature length version of this?