Michael Keaton is stepping into the shoes of John McAfee, the controversial creator of the world’s first commercial computer antivirus software, in the upcoming King of the Jungle, which also stars Seth Rogen.
Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who previously made I Love You Phillip Morris (2009), are the directors, while Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (American Crime Story) are scripting the film. Co-produced by Condé Nast Entertainment and Epic Entertainment, the film will look for foreign buyers at the ongoing American Film Market.
The project, announced last year, was earlier set to star Johnny Depp, Deadline said.
King of the Jungle is based on a 2012 Wired magazine report about the founder of digital security firm McAfee Associates, who went on to become a suspect in a drug manufacturing and trafficking case and in the 2012 murder of an American expatriate in Belize. The article, “John McAfee’s Last Stand”, shed light on McAfee’s bizarre lifestyle after he took off to Belize with all his fortune in 2009. It also chornicles the day that the police landed up at McAfee’s mansion to question him in the murder case. The entrepreneur has denied involvement in the murder and fled to Guatemala after the police sought to investigate him, later returning to the United States.
Rogen plays Ari Furman, the author of the piece. In the film, Furman accepts an assignment to interview McAfee, but on reaching the latter’s estate in Belize, “finds himself pulled into McAfee’s escalating paranoia, unhinged reality, and murder,” according to Deadline.
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