In the late 2000s and early 2010s,Ben Affleckmade the shift from blockbuster star to visionary director. After initially impressing audiences with his acclaimed directorial debut,Gone Baby Gone, Affleck established himself as one of the most capable and exciting filmmakers in the business with the releases ofThe Townin 2010 and the Best Picture-winningArgoin 2012. To date, he has directed five features, four of which have RottenTomatoes scores above 90%. His next project, aNetflixfilm, has reportedly just begun filming.
As much success as Affleck has seen as a director thus far, there have been some disappointments andprojects that failed to see the light of day. One such case is a film that would have told the story of the infamousMcDonald’s Monopoly scam. After beating out several other Hollywood power players in a bidding war to acquire the rights to the story, Affleck was set to make the film for 20th Century Fox. In the wake ofDisneypurchasing Fox’s entertainment business for over $70 billion in 2019, though, the “McScam” film wasone of many projects that Disney either outright canceled or halted development on.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Paid a Record-setting Price To Acquire the Rights to ‘McScam’
In 2018, an article titled “How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions” was published byThe Daily Beast. It told thestranger-than-fiction true storyof how more than $24 million was illegally claimed after a formerpolice officernamed Jerome Paul Jacobson rigged McDonald’s popular Monopoly game. Shortly after the article hit the internet, it went viral, becoming the #1 trending topic on Twitter within a day. This caused many members of Hollywood to quickly pounce at the opportunity to acquire the rights to the story in order to adapt it into a film.
A massive, star-studded bidding war commenced just a handful of days after the article was published. Warner Bros. wanted to buy the project forSteve Carellto star in. Netflix made a bid to potentially attachRobert Downey Jr.andTodd Phillips. Universal tried to nab the rights and placeKevin Hartin the leading role. Other movie stars-turned-producers who attempted to purchase the film includedMark WahlbergandWill Ferrell.Martin Scorseseshowed interest in purchasing it and castingLeonardo DiCaprio.Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment even got in on the bidding. Eventually, when the dust settled, the winners were 20th Century Fox and Affleck andMatt Damon’s production company, Pearl Street Films. They acquired the rights for areported $1 million, which was thehighest price ever paid for an optioned article in Hollywood history at that time. Affleck was set to direct with Damon to star, and the screenplay was going to be written byDeadpoolwritersRhett ReeseandPaul Wernick.
Evident by the amount of money being bid to purchase the rights, the “McScam” movie wasthought to be a big potential hit. In retrospect, the frenzied bidding war it fueled was an early indicator of where Hollywood was headed. In the early 2020s, we saw an onslaught ofsensationalized true stories centered around recognizable brandssuch asBlackberry,Flamin' Hot,Tetris,Dumb Money, and Affleck’s ownAir. Movies that, at their best, are compelling narratives with resonant themes about the state of our world and, at their worst, feel like hastily-made films adapted from Wikipedia pages.
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Oh, what could have been!
It should be noted that in our increasingly crowded entertainment landscape,this new sort of IP boomisnot a coincidence. Executives seek these stories out and sometimes go as far as to introduce them to the public years before the film adaptation even gets released. An important piece of information about the “McScam” article and bidding war is that producerDavid Klawansessentially orchestrated the whole thing. Klawans — an indie movie and TV producer known for his ability to uncover tremendous real-life stories through diligent research, who executive producedArgo —had been developing the “McScam” article with journalistJeff Maysh, for two years, with theexpressed purpose of eventually turning it into a film. It’s a strategy that Klawans developed. He finds obscure true stories, approaches journalists to research them and turns them into long-form articles, and then — after acquiring the life rights of the stories' subjects — circulates the articles around Hollywood to garner interest from production companies.
Disney Buying Fox Killed Ben Affleck’s ‘McScam’ Movie
It’s fair to say that Affleck’s proposed film had tremendous momentum out of the gate. That all changed in the spring of 2019 when Disney completed their purchase of 20th Century Fox. After the deal was complete, many in-development former Fox films werecanceled by Disney. These scrapped projects includedChanning Tatum’snever-realized Gambit movie, aFlash GordonrebootfromTaika Waititi, a sequel toChronicle, and aMagic: The Gatheringmovie. Since one of the strongest motivations behind Disney’s studio takeover was bolstering its back catalogfor the then-forthcomingDisney+ streaming service, many movies that were being worked on by Fox before the merger weren’t deemed a priority. Even some of the films that did ultimately get a release, likeX-Men: Dark Phoenix, quickly became forgotten flops after being unceremoniously dumped into theaters by Disney.
Though the “McScam” film was never officially announced as canceled by Disney, the lack of updates points to the fact that it was put on the backburner and ultimately left in the past. One of the last times Affleck spoke about it publicly, he hinted at the complications caused by the Disney deal by tellingColliderin 2020, “We’ve gotten a new draft. That’s really good. Hollywood’s a weird place, because the person who was running the studio when they bought that script, just left that job. And the studio that was going to make it got bought by another studio. So there’s these moments where things sort themselves out, and you sort of see ‘Is this still a priority, or are they really interested in different kinds of movies?’ And I’m not sure whether or not, McScam, what kind of priority it is. We really like it. We’re still developing the script.”
Documentary fans will remember that Hollywood did end up telling the “McScam” story in 2020, with HBO’s hit six-part docu-seriesMcMillion$,which was produced byMark Wahlberg. As for a narrative film version, though, Affleck’s version seems to have died at Disney. With virtually no news coming about the film in the past five years, and the director and others involved having moved on to other projects, it stands to reason that a revival isn’t imminent. Hollywood is an unpredictable place, though. So, maybe one day they’ll return to this story with a new director and new stars attached. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
McMillions
