Argo, and, to a lesser extent* Zero Dark Thirty, are just the most recent examples of newspaper and magazine articles fuelling movies. It’s a long-standing tradition and one that Mark Wahlberg intends to keep going. He’s attached to produce an as-yet untitled thriller about a hacker for Universal.
Jonathan Herman has been hired to write the script, which will adapt David Kushner’s piece for GQ called The Hacker Is Watching.
The real-life case saw a ruthless, skilled hacker targeting the students at a large high school in the US. He gained access to their computers, sent malware and various files and even fired up the webcams on laptops to record them unawares.
As the script has yet to be written, we don’t know how much of the real-life case will feed into the finished product, but it’s certainly a compelling subject for a drama thriller in this techno-savvy world. We can’t wait to see what the viral marketing campaign will be…
Wahlberg for now is simply attached to produced, though he could end up taking a role. He’ll next appear in Broken City (which he’s also producing), 2 Guns and Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor.
*Since the man partly responsible for the source articles was also writing the movie in that case.