THE film director Sir Ridley Scott is preparing the most unlikely movie of his career - a feature-length version of the venerable board game Monopoly.

The 69-year-old British film-maker, whose hits include Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, has been offered the pick of young actresses to help turn the property game into a racy comedy thriller.

William Morris, the oldest theatrical agency in Hollywood, has promised Hasbro, which owns Parker Brothers, the manufacturer of Monopoly in the US, that the cream of its stable of 2,000 actors will help create a blockbuster movie.

Scarlett Johansson, 22, who has already made several films in Britain, once joked that she explored London through the British version of Monopoly. She is said to find the prospect of a film version “funny, wacky, but interesting”.

Other stars being considered for roles include Kirsten Dunst, who plays Spider-Man’s girlfriend. Scott is expected to cast a mature actor as Rich Uncle Pennybags, a cavorting capitalist in a top hat.

Hasbro, which claims that Monopoly has been played by 750m people since the 1930s, wants the film to feature “sexy young people” in an attempt to win over teenagers who regard board games as a last resort on a wet afternoon.

“Hasbro already has cool games like Ouija, which could be a supernatural movie, but we think of Monopoly with Ridley Scott as director or producer, as a massive global hit. Everyone has played Monopoly in one version or another so, hopefully, they would be curious about how it translates to the screen,” said a Hasbro consultant last week.

Times Recommends

• No cause for celebration in crushed Sarajevo
• Jazz funeral for the final victims of Katrina
• French fined for 'insulting' civil servants