Since his breakthrough with Central Station in 1998, Brazilian director Walter Salles has brought us the likes of The Motorcycle Diaries, Dark Water and On The Road. Now he’s lining up a new gig as he’s in talks to helm The Man In The Rockerfeller Suit, according to Variety.
Fox Searchlight are backing the movie, which is still in the very early stages as they’re yet to even find a screenwriter to adapt Mark Seal’s 2011 book of the same name.
The movie will tell the true-life tale of German-born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who headed for the US as a teenager in the late 1970s. Shortly afterwards he began assuming a variety of identities, eventually settling on Clark Rockefeller, the ‘reluctant scion of the family with the countrys most famous name’. He used the name as well as his skills at passing himself off as something he wasn’t in order to climb the ranks of upper-crust East Coast society.
He lived in luxury, landed prestigious jobs on Wall Street, and even has a 12-year marriage with businesswoman Sandra Boss, who was unaware of his true identity. However the con fell apart in the when Boss divorced him and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter. An even darker aspect of his past was revealed in March 2011, when Gerhartsreiter was charged with the 1985 murder of a Californian man named Jonathan Sohus.