Volkswagen scandal gets A-list treatment in new film proposal
It was only a matter of time. The Wolf of Wall Street is turning his attention to saving the planet, after Leonardo DiCaprio snapped up the film rights to a new book on the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
DiCaprio’s film company Appian Way will be in the driving seat, turning an as-yet unnamed and unpublished book on the scandal by New York Times journalist Jack Ewing into a Hollywood blockbuster for Paramount studios.
The publishing rights for the book were sold for a six-figure sum to Norton earlier this month.
DiCaprio, whose company produced Wolf of Wall Street, is one of Hollywood’s best-known eco-warriors himself, and has launched a fund for environmental causes, which has called for divestment from fossil fuels.
Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest carmaker, has said 11m cars around the world have been fitted with software to help cheat emissions tests, which was first discovered in 500,000 cars in the US.
Since then more than £20bn has been wiped off the company’s value.
If VW chief Martin Winterkorn’s “we totally screwed up” speech was the most powerful moment of the year in business, now avid followers of the fallout can watch it again and again, only this time with good-looking actors.
The best VW can hope for is that Di Caprio plays Winterkorn.