Steven Soderbergh heads south for movie about the Panama Papers

July 7th 2016, 9:55am

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Steven Soderbergh is one of those directors that for every one “bleh” film he does (OCEAN’S TWELVE, THE GOOD GERMAN) there’s about 15 more that are “hmmm, quite fascinating indeed” (please don’t make me list all of them). Luckily, it sounds as though his streak with the latter is set to continue as he will be involved with making a movie about the Panama Papers scandal. Hmmm, quite fascinating indeed.

Deadline got the exclusive that Soderbergh will produce and possibly direct a film based on the upcoming book SECRECY WORLD by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein about the aforementioned scandal that rocked the world earlier this year. The report also detailed that Lawrence Grey of Grey Matter Productions will be teaming up with Anonymous Content to finance the film, with Scott Z. Burns set to write the script.

Also on the team is producer Michael Sugar who shared in the Best Picture glory for SPOTLIGHT. His involvement in the film is benefitting, as SPOTLIGHT is also a movie about an Earth-shattering scandal uncovered by journalists—albeit a far more rapey scandal (unless you include a rape…of the financial world. Boom. Political joke).

In a very half-assed nutshell, the scandal involved the leak of about 11 million files, primarily detailing the shady financial dealings of many a’ shady people from around the globe involving offshore accounts. Some notable names dragged through the mud (even though they didn’t do anything illegal, per se) were Jackie Chan, Simon Cowell and Stanley Kubrick.

I’m very interested to see how this movie plays out, especially because news of the data leak, which was the largest in history, hasn’t been in the news much recently, and the book the movie is being based on isn’t even out yet. I feel there’s just so much we don’t know about the issue, which would make for a great journalism movie, a la ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN or SPOTLIGHT. Most importantly, I’m excited to see Soderbergh take on hefty global current events again, which I don’t think he’s really tackled as a director since SYRIANA. At the very least, given that it’s Soderbergh, we know it will at least look pretty.

Soderbergh is currently working on LOGAN LUCKY with Channing Tatum set for some time next year.