20th Century Fox must feel like they’ve won the lottery beating a number of major studios to possibly the best sounding movie I’ve ever seen and read. To celebrate the studio should go out for a happy meal.
Deadline broke the story that Ben Affleck is attached to direct the story on the theft of the McDonald’s Monopoly Game. Joining The Town and Argo helmer is his best friend and Jason Bourne star Matt Damon will be leading the film based on the true crime story of a man rigging McDonald’s Monopoly game stealing a rumoured $24+ million and shared with a number of people.
The story came to life due to Jeff Maysh wonderfully written article published by The Daily Beast. Seriously read this story and you’ll see why this needs to be a film and the talent already involved is perfect to handle it.
In Affleck, you have the man who directed The Town and let's not forget the other critically acclaimed films he’s helmed. Then in Damon, you have one of the best actors when given the right material is brilliant.
Furthermore, this film could be a perfect return for the Batman actor after getting burned on a number of recent DC movies and his passion project, Live By Night. Meanwhile, Damon could use this as reaffirming his position as a top class actor (along with playing Carroll Shelby in James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari) after a number of flops.
The project will be written by Deadpool duo Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese and will be produced by The Pearl Street pair.
The bidding for Maysh’s ‘How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions’ was massive and competitive. Universal lined up a bid for Kevin Hart, Warner Bros were involved for Crazy Stupid Love directors John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Steve Carell and producer Andrew Lazar.
Meanwhile, Netflix made a number of bids for different producing partners, Eric Newman & Bryan Unkeless, Robert Downey Jr & Susan Downey, and finally Todd Phillips.
The bidding war was won by Fox and David Klawans, he’ll now serve as exec producer and will be re-teaming with Affleck having worked together on Argo.
It’s going be interesting to see which role Damon will play because I’d love to see him in either role and it’ll be great to see Affleck behind the camera again hopefully just focusing on directing because there’s going to be a massive number of actors and actresses wanting a role.
Additionally, I think Fox is the ideal home when you think the number of films that were under their Searchlight banner, which I expect this will be, and this will be out for 2019 award season.
Plus I think it’s great for Affleck to travel around the studios as a director after being a Warner Bros man for years both in front and behind the camera and while Fox is still Fox might as well work with them before they join Disney.
No comments:
Post a Comment