Will try to explain it as concisely as I can...
One of our four partners got to know the Leo VP pretty well a couple years ago through a producer friend he was working with before our company was formed. Then this past October we somehow charmed the writer of
this article and made it among the finalist to bid for the screen rights. It was us, Plan B (Brad Pitt's company), and Smokehouse (George Clooney's company) vying for it. The writer liked our take the most, but we didn't have a big name behind us, so we reached out to Leo's company/their VP through the relationship our partner had. The VP fell in love the article's potential, officially partnered with us, and soon after it was down to just us and Clooney. Mind you, this was like 9 months after our company had been formed. We never in a million years expected to be in the running for something like this so soon, but there we were, going toe-to-toe with Clooney, with Leo somehow backing us. It was crazy. In the end, though, Clooney was able to offer more money, and he got it. There's a whole other crazy angle that I can't get into here, but if not for some screw up on behalf of the agent, we actually would have got it with the money we had, because, again, the author was rooting for us because he liked our take so much.
Anyway, it sucked to lose out, but that whole ordeal earned us a bit of respect among some of the major players, including Leo's guy. He liked our taste and wanted to try to find a way to work on something else together in the future. We landed the rights to this other article a month or so later I think, finally met the VP for drinks in person a few weeks ago, and like I said, all just really hit it off. Now he's super interested in this new project we have. We're currently putting together a big pitch deck, and again, will hopefully pitch to Paramount in July when the author's in town.
As for the article itself, I guess it can't hurt to
post, just please don't discuss it a ton here in the thread if you don't mind. Also, know that the article is only a starting point. We're not doing a straight adaptation. It's more of a jumping off point, and, among other things, it would center around a made-up female lead who would be investigating this whole ordeal. The main subject in the article would be the the other lead, who we're hoping will be played by a certain other
Wolf of Wall Street co-star. Some might say he's
Superbad...