A movie on the Cambridge Analytica scandal is in the works. As Facebook is finalising a $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for the privacy scandal, Deadline reports that a film is being prepped about Christopher Wylie, the young pink-haired data consultant purportedly at the middle of the whole thing.
David Gordon Green is in talks to direct, while Avengers: Endgame screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely already have a script ready. Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo will fund the film through their AGBO Production Company, and the project is being fast tracked for a 2020 start date.
As Deadline states, “Wylie is reputed to be the catalyst who illegally corralled personal data of 87 million people from their Facebook profiles, in order to institute a messaging system that push the buttons of a vast audience with disinformation campaigns that influenced the last presidential election and the Brexit vote. Wylie met Steve Bannon when he was editor of Breitbart and before he became Donald Trump‘s chief strategist”.
Wylie was 24 years old when he came up with the idea for the data analytics form Cambridge Analytica. It was reportedly funded by Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire and Republican donor. Wylie has told his story in official testimony and to journalistic outlets like The Guardian, and will be the central cog of the story. That article, written by Carole Cadwalladr, is part of the rights package here.
AGBO will reportedly put together the whole package before securing a distributor for the film. Although the company has been heavily involved in billion-dollar MCU films for the last decade, the company’s goal is to predominantly take on edgy material.
The currently untitled film is being described as one that will be far less flattering towards Mark Zuckerberg than The Social Network was (and even that wasn’t especially flattering).
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