Hollywood has fallen back in love with movies about journalism, and of the biggest stories to affect the business was Hulk Hogan's case against Gawker that left the Internet news site bankrupt. Already there's been an acclaimed documentary on the subject, and now there are two rival features racing to see which one will open first. The latest we now know will be directed by Red Sparrow's Francis Lawrence.
THR reports Lawrence will direct a film based on the Hogan-Gawker case, adapted from Ryan Holiday’s book Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue. The Big Short writer Charles Randolph will write the script. If you don't know the details, it goes like this: Paypal founder Peter Thiel was outed as a gay man by one of Gawker's sites. He spent years looking for a way to exact revenge, and he found it when a sex tape of WWE legend Hulk Hogan was released by Gawker. Thiel quietly backed Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker seeking millions of dollars in damages. Gawker was hit with a $140M judgment that wiped them out and left their CEO Nick Denton unemployed.
Last year saw the release of documentary Nobody Speak: Hulk Hogan, Gawker and Trials of a Free Press, which you can now find on Netflix. It's worth watching if you haven't already. Last March we learned Modern Family's Jason Winer was looking to direct a courtroom drama based on the trial, and now it has some competition. I doubt both will see the light of day, or at the very least one will have a significant advantage over the other, which might be better off as a TV series at that point.
