They're running out of ideas in Tinseltown

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.