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George Clooney to Produce and Potentially Direct '$700 Billion Man'

by Ethan Anderton
April 14, 2011
Source: Variety

He's already tackled McCarthyism and the fear of socialism with one of my favorite films, Good Night and Good Luck, now George Clooney may take on a more contemporary topic sometime soon. Variety reports Clooney will team with his producing partner Grant Heslov to make The $700 Billion Man, a(nother) project about the Wall Street bailout. Based on a 2009 Washington Post article, the story follows TARP mastermind Neel Kashkari, a top official for then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who developed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which bailed out the big banks after the '08 economic collapse.

Screenwriter Zach Helm, who wrote the brilliant script for Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Ferrell, has been brought on to script the feature, and the project is being developed as a potential directing vehicle for Clooney as well. This project also reunites Clooney with producers Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher at Double Feature Films, the team behind Out of Sight from Steven Soderbergh. Right now Clooney is busy with another politically charged film in the form of The Ides of March. Clooney's films (as a director) have always had some sort of relevance to today's social issues, and every single one of them has impressed me. Hopefully this one does the same, so we'll be on the lookout for it. Interested, too?

Filed under Development, Movie News

From around the web:

Voice of Reason

Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher are great producers and can help make this flick as poignant as it could be stylish and well distributed. All good names, all good potential. It just sucks that the entertainment industry is trying to say "Wait a minute now!" about the economic crisis while the rest of the world either doesn't give a crap or merely can't do anything about it. I wish these films—like 'Inside Job'—actually changed things, otherwise these films just m/take money from us no different than the dudes they're trying to shake a stick at.
Gh

stranger than fiction had the Goddess Emma Thompson in it and what else? loll J/k I loved the story about the writer and the writing coming alive stuff...gr8t!
TwirlyWolf

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIING! boring |ˈbôri ng | adjective not interesting; tedious