George Clooney sure likes his politics. With the likes of Good Night And Good Luck, Syriana and the movie he's currently directing, The Ides Of March, he hasn't shied away from trying to deal with political issues on the big screen. Now he's got another one up his sleeve, with Variety reporting he's developing The $700 Billion Man, based on a 2009 Washington Post article about Neel Kashkari, who developed the deal to bail out the big US banks, alongside Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, after the economic collapse in 2008.
Following the deal, Kashkari left Washington and moved to a cabin in Northern California where he could "detox" from politics, partly because of the immense pressure put him during that time. He became a bit of a political football, tugged from all sides as he put together the plan bail-out failing banks.
Clooney is apparently eyeing it as a potential directing gig, and it joins numerous other projects he has simmering away at his and Grant Heslov's Smoke House production company. Stanger Than Fiction writer Zach Helm is handling the screenplay.