Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company is joining with Paramount Pictures to make a movie about the Volkswagen AG diesel-emissions cheating scandal, according to the studio.
Paramount Pictures has already optioned the movie rights to a book about the controversy enveloping the German automaker, which could pay up to $18 billion in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fines for its role in installing software in certain vehicles that produced misleading emissions results. The fallout has already cost Volkswagen Chief Executive Martin Winterkorn his job.
DiCaprio has teamed up with Paramount for movies on business malfeasance in the past – partnering in 2013 on “The Wolf of Wall Street.” And later this year, Paramount will release “The Big Short,” based on Michael Lewis’s 2010 book about a group of bankers who anticipated the foreclosure crisis.
Europe’s largest automaker has admitted rigging diesel emissions tests in the United States, and Germany’s transport minister says it also manipulated them in Europe.
The scandal has wiped more than a third off the German company’s share price, forced out its long-time CEO and prompted investigations around the world.
The Volkswagen film will be based on a book already sold by New York Times journalist Jack Ewing that’s to be published by W.W. Norton & Company. There’s no word yet on any actors or director attached to the film.
