Okay, so who’s got muscles and a mustache big enough to play Hulk Hogan? Kevin Nash, phone call on line 1! Hogan’s infamous court case against Gawker is about to become a dramatic flick, and the guy to direct is Modern Family director Jason Winer.
While there’s already been a great documentary on the case in Netflix’s Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, this film will give it a narrative spin. Titled Thiel vs. Gawker, the courtroom drama will focus on the lawsuit brought by Hogan, aka Terry Bollea, against Gawker, the once-popular news/gossip site. Without Hogan’s permission the site posted a sex tape he was in, causing the former wrestler to sue them for $100M. He won and was awarded $115M plus $25M in damages, sending the site into bankruptcy and eventually out of business.
The most disgusting part of the case was the involvement of multi-billionaire mogul and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who invested millions of dollars supporting Hogan’s case as a means of finally shutting Gawker down. He had been backing various lawsuits against them in hopes of doing exactly that, out of revenge for a 2007 article they published that publicly outed him. This tactic of trying to sue rival news outlets into oblivion has become standard practice of late, stretching all the way up occupants of the White House who see it as a way of silencing the press.
John Gary wrote the script, reportedly tapping 23 sources for information. Still, this has the whiff of being a TV movie so who knows? We’ll see how that works out and how long it takes for financing and a cast to come together. Maybe they can borrow some money from Hogan? [Variety]
