Mark Seal‘s book, "The Man In The Rockefeller Suit," is one that Hollywood has been trying to crack for a while now. At one time attached to Scott Cooper (before he would go on to direct "Out Of The Furnace"), Walter Salles was linked to the film way back in 2013 with his longtime collaborator Jose Rivera penning the script. Now, three years later, the project is back to life with another big name behind the camera.
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Pablo Trapero, the filmmaker behind "Carancho" and "White Elephant," and coming in hot off his gangster tale "The Clan" which will hit U.S. cinemas this spring, is now set to direct ‘Rockefeller.’ David Bar Katz has penned the script that tells the true story of Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German-born con man who for decades passed himself off as Clark Rockefeller, a member of the famed and powerful family, rising up the social ladder as a result. Here’s the book synopsis:
This shocking expose goes behind the headlines to uncover the true story of Clark Rockefeller, wealthy scion of a great American family, who kidnapped his own daughter and vanished. The police and FBI were baffled. Tips poured in, but every lead was a dead end … because “Clark Rockefeller” did not exist. In a gripping work of investigative journalism, Mark Seal reveals how German native Christian Gerhartsreiter came to the United States, where he stepped in and out of identities for decades, eventually posing as a Rockefeller for twelve years, married to a wealthy woman who had no idea who he really was. Fast-paced, hypnotic, and now updated with more stunning details, The Man in the Rockefeller Suit chillingly reveals the audacity and cunning of a shape-shifting con man.
The project is set up over at Fox Searchlight, and here’s hoping that after years of kicking around, this one finally gets made. It sounds like a great big-screen tale, and the perfect project for Trapero to use to leap into Hollywood. [Deadline]