Warner Bros wants to tell the story of Enron’s collapse with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role.
The rights are being finalized as we speak, to greenlight a film based on Conspiracy of Fools, the book from New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning scribe Sheldon Turner has been hired to adapt the script. The studio has already spent over seven figures for the book option and screenwriter fees alone.
DiCaprio would play a new Enron employee who slowly realizes that something is rotten in the city of Houston. He becomes part of the group that exposes the fraudulent accounting that drove Enron into bankruptcy in 2001.
Sounds interesting, although I hope they hire a competent screenwriter because the guy who wrote The Longest Yard isn’t going to cut it.
January 15th, 2008 at 9:26 am
This movie should not be made.
I know that this project is a movie and not a documentary and therefore
should not have to be a slave to the constraints of “fact”. The brief plot summary tells us of a wide eyed new- comer (none less than Leonardo DiCaprio!) coming into the Enron den of iniquity and making discoveries of a far reaching scandal with Skilling and Lay at the helm. The fact that none of this true should, I suppose, not be a factor in a work of fiction.
But the public doesn’t know that. For many viewers, movies are real life. I have read the book that you say the movie will be based on. To be fair, it deals relatively even-handedly with a topic that has already been beaten to a bloody pulp almost exclusively by authors bent on making a buck through sensationalism and public predisposition. But your brief plot summary already promises considerable extrapolation from the book’s story that is already considerably extrapolated from documented facts or interviews.
To be sure, there were indeed some shady dealings afoot at Enron. But
unless you are willing to produce a story starring the movements of Andy Fastow and a few other more minor characters, you are seriously barking up the wrong tree.
If anyone is paying attention there in movie-land, the Enron pendulum
has been swinging back toward reality for quite some time now. Many
previous convictions have been dropped, reduced, reversed or found to
be based on very shaky grounds. Ken Lay is dead, but Jeff Skilling’s appeal is in the works and is VERY strong. If you are interested, a complete copy is available on-line. There is quite a good chance that the biggest “House of Cards” is the government’s case against these people.
Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by the government’s Enron Task Force in an attempt to unveil a non-existent
“conspiracy” beyond that of the already confessed embezzlers, Fastow
and Co. (enough money, BTW, to have gone a long way toward the relief
of the “victims”). They basically found squat. Good men are in prison, families and lives have been irrevocably destroyed, and all to satisfy a government (and public) blood lust. There is more evidence of Task Force manipulation and misconduct than there was real evidence of criminal conduct against Skilling and Lay.
If you want to produce a true blockbuster and not one that is steeped
in lies, tired misconceptions and witch-hunt mentalities, you should
consider telling the other side of the story. It is fascinating. As they say, “truth is stranger”, and there is no need to make anything up. That side is very ably represented at length by Houston lawyer Tom Kirkendall in his blog “Houston’s Clear Thinkers” (search Skilling or Enron).
BTW, Jeff Skilling happens to be a dear friend of mine; I have known him since high school. I am a good person and so is he. This ordeal is literally killing him. Please consider this.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I’m not a friend of anyone involved in this story, but I also read the book and I don’t think there was anyone under the age of 40 in it. It sounds like the version being suggested for the big screen is such a rewrite of history that I’ll be surprised if they’re even able to use Enron as the company’s name in the end. The more reasonable angle would be to take it from the perspective of the Fortune reporter who wrote the first “Enron has no clothes” story, though that would take Leo out of the running for the lead since that reporter’s a woman.