Johnny Depp To Be King of The Jungle, With IMR International Handling Foreign Sales in Cannes

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Monday, 15 May 2017 06:25

Three-time Academy Award® nominee Johnny Depp is set to star in King of the Jungle, a dark comedy to be directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa from a script by Golden Globe® and Emmy® Award winners Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.

Based on the Wired magazine article "John McAfee's Last Stand" by Joshua Davis, the film, from Condé Nast Entertainment, Zaftig Films, MadRiver Pictures, and Epic Entertainment, tells the wild true story of rogue tech magnate John McAfee, creator of the McAfee Antivirus software, who cashed-in his fortune, left civilization, and moved to the jungle in Belize. 

There, he set-up a Colonel Kurtz-like compound of guns, sex and madness.  In the film, a Wired magazine investigator accepts what he thinks is a run-of-the-mill assignment to interview McAfee, but once he arrives in Belize, he finds himself pulled into McAfee's escalating paranoia, slippery reality, and murder. 

Depp can be seen later this month in Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and his upcoming films include Fox's Murder on the Orient Express, Miramax's Labyrinth, and Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2.

The film will be produced by Condé Nast's Dawn Ostroff and Jeremy Steckler; Zaftig's Charlie Gogolak, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and Epic's Joshua Davis. MadRiver's Marc Butan and Epic's Joshuah Bearman will executive produce.

IMR International is handling foreign sales at Cannes with CAA repping domestic rights. 

Depp is represented by CAA; Alexander and Karaszewski are represented by CAA and attorney Christine Cuddy; Requa and Ficarra are represented by CAA and attorney Jeff Frankel; Condé Nast Entertainment is represented by CAA and attorney Ziffren Brittenham; and Davis is represented by UTA and attorney Linda Lichter.

IMR's Cannes lineup includes The Sisters Brothers directed by Jacques Audiard and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Joaquin Phoenix, Freak Shift directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Alicia Vikander and Dumplin' directed by Anne Fletcher and starring Jennifer Aniston.

Condé Nast Entertainment

Condé Nast Entertainment (CNÉ) is an award-winning next generation studio developing and producing projects across film, television, social and premium digital video, and virtual reality. CNÉ produces more than 5,000 pieces of original digital content per year, spanning all genres – documentaries, animation, comedy, celebrity and how-to, and is distributed across over 50 platforms including web, mobile and OTT. CNÉ content delivered more than 4.5 billion video views in the past year, won its first Emmy Award in 2015, received multiple Academy Award nominations for its short-form film digital content, and was nominated for a Peabody Award.

In addition to its growing digital video network, CNÉ also has five unscripted television series in production or on-air including the critically acclaimed "Last Chance U," "The New Yorker Presents" and "Vanity Fair Confidential," and multiple television projects set up with various networks. The company recently wrapped production on the feature film "Granite Mountain," starring Josh Brolin and Miles Teller, and is in production on "The Old Man and the Gun," starring Casey Affleck and Robert Redford.