It often seems to happen that numerous movie projects on the same topic get set up all at once. Well, there’s now three Delorean biopics in the works in Tinsel Town, all aiming to tell the story of the troubled car maker.
The latest to be announced is from Time Inc. Studios and XYZ Films under a deal to try and produce movies based on rights to Time Inc.’s vast back catalogue of articles from magazines such as Time and Fortune. While others people have also recently announced possible Delorean movies, this one looks like it might have the best chance of getting off the ground, as it’s getting co-operation from John Delorean’s business partner Fred Dellis as well as the executor of Delorean’s estate, his son Zachary, who’s given filmmakers access to an unpublished memoit by the man himself.
The other Delorean biopics in the works are one being set up for Brett Ratner to direct, as well as another under producer David Permut, who’s bought the rights to the life story of Delorean’s attorney, Mayer Morganroth.
In many ways Delorean seems an odd subject for a triple movie race to get into production (it’s often the first to go before the cameras that gets made, with the others being shelved at that point, which is what happened with Gus Van Sant and Bryan Singer’s comepeting Harvey Milk projects). Delorean is best known for setting up a car company and producing a gull winged, stainless steel car that made no money (although it became legendary as the time machine in Back To The Future). With the company losing money, he got accused of drug trafficking in order to try and prop up the business (he was aquitted due to claims he was entrapped), before the company went bust and he disappeared off into disgrace.
It’s not your usual jolly biopic subject then, but you can kind of see why filmmakers like the idea. With every single film being a massive struggle to get made, you can see why they might like the idea of a movie about a man who’d do anything to try and make a crazy plan work, even if they might not approve of his methods.