Lucy Prebbles play, Enron, about the rise and fall of the enormous US energy company of the same name, only opened a couple of weeks ago at the Royal Court Theatre in London, but Columbia Pictures is obviously so impressed with it, that even before it’s finished it West End run and transferred to Broadway in the spring, they’ve already picked up the screen rights in what Variety descibes as a high six-figue deal.
Prebbles will adapt the play herself. She already has some screen experience, writing the TV adaptation of The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, starring Billie Piper.
Her Enron play looks at the greed and insanely dodgy accounting practices that saw the company reporting huge profits, which it only managed to do by hiding billions upon billions of losses. When the truth came out, the company collapsed and went bust. At the time it was the biggest corporate bankruptcy in history, although its since been beaten to that dubious record by Lehman Brothers.
The scandalous goings-on at Enron have already been the subject of the excellent documentary, The Smartest Guys In The Room, which showed that there’s more than enough drama and intrigue in the story to make a truly excellent movie. Prebbles play is also very timely, with showing the ugly side of capitalism very popular at the moment.
Enron continues at the Royal Court until November, but unfortunately it’s already sold out.