Steven Soderbergh Has A Panama Papers Movie In The Works

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Hollywood has a long, storied tradition of diving into political landmines to make a statement, even if the topic hasn’t exactly arrested the public, such as the recent Michael Bay take on Benghazi. Interestingly enough, that has been one of the few western, political films with a big budget of late. Surely there is a filmmaker chomping at the bits right now waiting for the whole Hillary e-mail scandal to finally come to a conclusion, but one of the least likely subjects is actually being made into a film; the Panama Papers. That isn’t to say that there needs to be explosions and gunfire to make for a cool film about current events, with The Big Short as proof of that, but it doesn’t hurt.

According to Variety, Steven Soderbergh is currently attached to an unnamed project that will be diving into the Panama Papers. The film, being loosely based off of the upcoming book The Secrecy World by Jake Bernstein, will look to focus on what was the biggest information leak in history that detailed the rich and powerful of the world snagged up in tax evasion, money laundering, and even drug and weapons deals. Soderbergh is only attached as a producer right now, but the report details that he may also direct the upcoming film.

Soderbergh’s experience ranges from the cool heist film series Ocean’s 11 to taut thrillers like Haywire and Contagion to more eccentric work like Magic Mike and Beyond the Candelabra. It’ll be interesting to see how the Panama Papers leak translates into a two-hour-long story for mass consumption, but it may be able to shed some more light on one of the more interesting and overlooked “big stories” of the past few years.

(Via Variety)

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