EXCLUSIVE: Fox is poised to win the hot lit property in the marketplace at the moment, a giant Happy Meal that everyone wanted. Ben Affleck is attached to direct, and Matt Damon to star in a true crime story written by Jeff Maysh and published in The Daily Beast several days ago on an ex-cop who rigged the McDonald’s Monopoly game, allegedly stealing over $24 million dollars and sharing it with an unsavory group of co-conspirators who offered kickbacks to the mastermind. The Pearl Street partners will produce, and the Deadpool scribes Paul Wernick & Rhett Reese will write the script.

Sources said that bidding was ferocious for Maysh’s How An Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game And Stole Millions. Lining up to bid were Universal for Kevin Hart, Warner Bros for John Requa & Glenn Ficarra and Steve Carell and producer Andrew Lazar, and Netflix, which bid for producing partners Eric Newman & Bryan Unkeless, Robert Downey Jr & Susan Downey, and Todd Phillips. The auction was handled by IPG’s Joel Gotler, who repped Maysh. David Klawans, who got rights to the article and exec veep on Affleck’s Oscar-winning Argo, is exec producing.

The article opens in 2001 in Rhode Island, as a million dollar check is delvered to a man who said he’d won the $1 million grand prize after collecting Monopoly pieces attached to food products, defying the 1 in 250 million odds and modeled after the venerable board game that the piece says was invented as a warning about the destructive nature of greed. A camera crew was dispatched to hear how the man won, and they chronicled his series of lies. They were FBI agents closing in on a sting that began with a tip about an “Uncle Jerry,” who’d sell stolen game pieces. Solid detective work unearthed Jerry Jacobson, a head of security for a Los Angeles company responsible for generating the game pieces. It led to a wide conspiracy that involved mobsters, psychic, strip-club owners, drug traffickers and a family of Mormons who falsely claimed to have won more than $24 million in cash and prizes.

Pearl Street veep Madison Ainley brought in the project and will shepherd it for Pearl Street. Matt Reilly will steer it for Fox. Reilly worked with Affleck on The Town when he was an exec at Warner Bros before moving to Fox.

IPG brokered the sale, and WME reps Affleck and Damon, and Reese & Wernick.

It's said that, moving forward, Fox will only be able to make around four theatrical films and four streaming films a year which is a huge change for a studio previously responsible for a full slate of movies.....

Alan Horn is now in charge of greenlighting projects and, sadly, movies like Ben Affleck's drama about an ex-cop who rigged the McDonald's Monopoly game and stole $24 million is now in doubt, despite it having Matt Damon attached to star and boasting a script by Deadpool's Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick.