So, adapting Monopoly has led Ridley Scott - director of Blade Runner, Gladiator, and American Gangster - to try to make something resembling an eighties Eddie Murphy comedy? Awesome. Michael Turner returns unexpectedly from the Iraq war to his small home town, a relieved family. I’m not saying it’s like that, but it’s somewhere around that route.”

It’s green, it’s lit, it’s got the most expensive real estate in the world around the edges - and that is where we start.”Īlso: “I always liked films like ‘Trading Places’ with Eddie Murphy. When high-school senior Taylin and her boyfriend Kevin tell Taylin's mother Sasha that they're expecting, Sasha wants Taylin to give the baby up for adoption. “You know, if you hover above Central Park at night in a helicopter, and you look down below, when you’re right in the middle of the park, it looks like a Monopoly board. Watch Locked Away (2010) free starring Paula Trickey, Jake Thomas, Kirsten Zien and directed by Doug Campbell. So, Scott decided to make a comedy about a Donald Trump–type character and his dealings with equally vicious real-estate tycoons: “It’s about greed … Greed becomes, hopefully, hysterically funny.” Sensible! This next part is less relatable: Do I have to show the game, with people running around on a board, with the large houses and funny top hats and that sort of thing?’ said no. We had a hard time initially, because my head led me down the route of saying, ‘Somehow, I have to integrate the game. Now Ridley Scott’s talking up the Monopoly adaptation, and what his description lacks in insanity it makes up for in clearly perceived bafflement that he’s for some reason making a Monopoly movie. Tell me, tell me, do you need me (need me) Tell me, tell me, do you love me Or is you just tryna play me Cause I need a girl to hold me down for life.

Thus far, the field’s high watermark comes via Peter Berg, who somehow figured out how to cram evil, sea-faring aliens into his Battleship movie. Cause I need a gal who's always by my side. That’s because it’s plenty of fun to imagine teams of screenwriters, locked away on major-studio lots, chugging coffee while grappling with how to graft plots onto stuff like the View-Master and it’s even better to hear what they actually came up with. Hollywood optioning every single board game, action figure, and childhood knickknack on Earth is the gift that keeps on giving. The best dark Lifetime movies are so diabolically twisted, they'll send you scrambling to gaze upon Heironymus Bosch's 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' to lighten the mood.Photo: Andreas Branch/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image The channel's best thrillers and rom coms also sport outrageous titles like, Mother, May I Sleep with Danger and I Me Wed. There's no shortage of controversial Lifetime original films ripped from the headlines, like The Craigslist Killer, Prosecuting Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, or even taken from history, such as Lizzie Borden Took an Ax. Lifetime true stories are especially memorable when they dip into slaying, scandal, and sin. Once in a while, Lifetime's fine line snaps, and the grotesqueness of shoving heavy subject matter into a TV movie mold becomes obvious. They can center on murder, addiction, abuse, and injustice, but they can't dial up the violence and they can't deviate too drastically from conventions.

These made-for-TV films have to walk a fine line. Ever since the first Lifetime TV movie, Memories of Murder, aired in 1990, the cable channel has reliably dished up some of the small screen's greatest women-in-peril masterpieces.

Locked away 2010