In a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, movie producer and author Frank Beddor talked about the story he came up with for the MONOPOLY movie that got Ridley Scott interested in making the project.

Beddor explained that his idea for “Monopoly” came from Lewis Carroll and his experience writing the “Looking Glass Wars.” The “Looking Glass Wars” is a book written by Beddor that was heavily inspired by “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass.”

See the rest of this article after the jump!

“They have this big world and this game — it’s the most famous board game in the world — and it just really came out of the whole ‘Alice’ thing. I took the approach of thinking of the main character falling down a rabbit hole and into a real place called Monopoly City … It was the re-engineering of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that got me thinking and then with this it came around full circle and I was able to utilize that. That’s a big world. They were searching for that.”

Beddor then went into detail about his main character and how the story begins:

“I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’ He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy. He has to defeat them. It tries to incorporate all the iconic imageries — a sports car pulls up, there’s someone on a horse, someone pushing a wheelbarrow — and rich Uncle Pennybags, you’re going to see him as the maître d’ at the restaurant and he’s the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera. There’s all these sight gags.”

Beddor says he pitched the details you just read to Scott and it made him want to direct the film. And you know what? I think it actually sounds kind of cool, and now Ridley Scott’s involvement in the project makes a lot more sense, to me at least.