Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried & FTX Draw More Hollywood Interest From Graham Moore & Vox’s New York Magazine

Crypto King Sam Bankman-Fried & FTX Draw More Hollywood Interest From Graham Moore & Vox’s New York Magazine

EXCLUSIVE: The wild story of crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried and the $32B meltdown of FTX is drawing considerable interest from Hollywood.

Michael Lewis is writing a book that has the likes of Amazon, Netflix, David Fincher, Josh Gad and David Heyman circling, while Scott Burns and Jonathan Glickman’s Panoramic are looking at a potential project with The New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Graham Moore, the Oscar-winning writer behind Benedict Cumberbatch film The Imitation Game, has also thrown his hat in the ring.

Moore is set to write and direct an adaptation of New York Magazine’s deep dive into the subject.

The magazine cover story, which looks at Bankman-Fried’s rise from an honest crypto guy ready to spend his fortune to save the world, to FTX’s fall into Chapter 11 with him having to sell his property in the Bahamas.

Scoop Wasserstein will produce on behalf of Vox Media Studios and New York Magazine. 

It marks Moore and Wasserstein’s latest project together as the pair were behind The Outfit, a psychological crime thriller feature starring Mark Rylance and Zoey Deutch, that Moore wrote and directed and premiered earlier this year.

Moore is considering the project as either a series or a feature film.

“Like everybody else on the planet, I’ve been unable to pry my eyes off of this story for weeks,” said Moore. “Thanks to New York Magazine’s peerless reporting, each new revelation is more shocking, fascinating, occasionally horrific and frequently hilarious than the last. I’m elated to partner with a team of world-class journalists as they report in real-time on a story that’s moving as fast as the internet. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the complex and singular characters at the center of huge technological moments. In SBF, ‘complex’ and ‘singular’ sound like understatements. Whether or not he intended on changing the world — it looks like he just did.”

New York Magazine and Vox Media Studios are also developing a documentary on the topic with the companies working alongside its reporters and sources across the country and in the Bahamas.

It would be the latest documentary project on the topic, similar to the Fyre Festival and Gamestop saga with competing projects. Vice is working on a doc, as is XTR and David Darg.

“The projects that we have put together around Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX are a model for how Vox Media Studios extends the storytelling of our incredible journalists,” added VMS’ Chief Creative Officer, Chad Mumm.

Vox Media Studios and New York Magazine are behind projects such as the forthcoming Sex Diaries docuseries adaptation for HBO, Razzlekhan: The Infamous Crocodile of Wall Street with Lily Collins at Hulu, and Who Killed Tulum? with Annapurna at Amazon Studios. 

Moore is represented by CAA and Felker Toczek, New York Magazine and Vox Media Studios are represented by WME and Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks.