Margot Robbie’s manufacturing firm LuckyChap, contemporary off a number of Academy Award nominations for its blockbuster hit, Barbie, is taking over a brand new problem — a movie primarily based on the board sport Monopoly. The announcement was made Wednesday at CinemaCon. However in contrast to Barbie, the place the climax centered across the toy’s authentic feminine creator as embodied by the diminutive Rhea Perlman, the circumstances behind the creation of Monopoly are fraught for a wholly totally different motive. Will LuckyChap rise to the event with one other feel-good hit that opens the door to forgotten historical past, or will it work to additional obscure the sport’s origins?
In The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World’s Favorite Board Game, creator Mary Pilon does an unbelievable job uncovering the key historical past of Monopoly. Her investigation, printed in 2015, reaffirms that Lizzie Magie, a staunch leftist in her day, invented and patented the precursor to Monopoly often known as The Landlord’s Game in 1903. That board sport was not a story in regards to the joys of capitalism, however its risks, and whereas it was influential in progressive circles on the time it by no means turned a business success. Solely later, within the Thirties, would Magie’s work be used as the muse for Charles B. Darrow’s Monopoly, the sport that may discover its solution to Parker Brothers and, finally, the huge catalog of mental property now owned by Hasbro. You’ll be able to learn extra because of an excerpt printed at The Guardian practically a decade in the past, however the e-book itself comes extremely really useful.
On condition that backstory, it is smart that Robbie’s firm would take a shine to the undertaking. It’s one more story of a girl sidelined by the machinations of company intrigue. However within the case of the unique Barbie, the creator Ruth Handler was additionally the co-founder of Mattel. She tremendously profited from her invention. Magie not a lot, and, tragically, her authentic concept was perverted into the mirror reverse of her intent. It’s no much less a troubling story than the generational traumas of American feminism, nevertheless it’s a really totally different story that LuckyChap has to inform.
Additional complicating the optics right here is the truth that mere months in the past Hasbro accomplished a draconian collection of layoffs that eradicated simply lower than one-third of its labor power, a maneuver that was finalized precisely two weeks earlier than Christmas 2023. In a means, these layoffs mirror the story of Monopoly itself, with those that carried out the labor of creation turning into disenfranchised from the revenues that may have in any other case rewarded their success.
LuckyChap clearly has its work lower out for it. First it took on the patriarchy. Now it might have capitalism squarely in its sights. Will it flinch?