Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer are reuniting for Wizard of Lies, a new HBO movie about Bernie Madoff. Barry Levinson will direct.
The project was first announced in 2011, when HBO secured the rights to Truth and Consequences: Life Inside The Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell, the Guardian reported at the time. The project was revived today, Deadline reporting that the project was finally given the green light.
De Niro will star as Madoff, with Pfeiffer starring as Ruth Madoff. Alessandro Nivola (American Hustle, Selma) will star as Mark Madoff, Madoff’s older son who committed suicide. The executive producers are Levinson, Berry Welsh and Tribeca Productions’ De Niro and Jane Rosenthal. Jason Sosnoff is co-executive producing.
Wizard of Lies will be based on Sandell’s book and Wizard of Lies by Diana Henriques. Both books are a behind-the-scenes look at Madoff’s historic ponzi scheme and the lives it destroyed.
The script was first written by John Burnham Schwartz, but Sam Baum and Sam Levinson were also hired to work on it.
It’s not clear when HBO will get this project moving, but the network does have some competition. ABC is developing its own mini-series on Madoff with Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner.
De Niro and Pfeiffer have worked together in the past, most recently in 2013’s The Family.
As for Levinson, he remains best known for directing Rain Man. He also directed HBO’s You Don’t Know Jack and Rock The Kasbah, which opens in October.
image courtesy of INFphoto.com