Behind Hollywood’s Bidding War for McDonald’s Monopoly Article

On a Saturday in late July, the Daily Beast posted a story titled “McScam: How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole Millions” — a picaresque, stranger-than-fiction conspiracy tale involving drug traffickers, mobsters, psychics, strip-club operators, and even a Mormon family who falsely claimed more than $24 million in cash and prizes over a decade of criminal collusion. As the sun began to set in Los Angeles, where the article's British-born author Jeff Maysh lives, dozens of movie offers came rolling in. And by Sunday, the story was the top Twitter trending topic in the world. “I didn't know there were so many producers in Los Angeles,” Maysh tells Vulture. “Anyone who'd ever thought about becoming a producer emailed me. I was getting literally thousands of emails.”