On the heels of the critical and commercial success of Sony's The Social Network, Michael London's Groundswell Productions is revving up its planned adaptation of Ken Auletta's book Googled: The End of the World as We Know It, having commenced searching for a writer, according to Forbes.
The film, due in 2012, will shine the spotlight on Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page -- both radically different moguls than Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
While the Google story may not be as filled with lies, greed and deceit like Zuckerberg's ascent, it's nonetheless a fairly compelling tale that should serve as a fascinating depiction of two people realizing their vision to change how we find and consume information.
As Groundswell begins hunting for someone to write the script, Deal Central endorses these five candidates to bring the search engine's story to the big screen.
1. Dustin Lance Black
The Oscar-winning screenwriter has worked with Groundswell before on Gus Van Sant's Milk, which won Sean Penn an Oscar for his portrayal of homosexual politician Harvey Milk. Black also wrote Clint Eastwood's upcoming movie about former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, which has Leonardo DiCaprio attached to star. (Black's directorial debut, What's Wrong With Virginia? debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, and judging from the harsh reviews it received, he'd be wise to stick to screenwriting.) Black is big on research, and the Google movie offers him a high-profile project that he can immerse himself in by hitting the history books and talking to people who were around Page and Brin before their search engine made them billionaires.
2. Scott Z. Burns
Burns also has a relationship with Groundswell, having written Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! Burns showed a flair for comedy with the script, and he'd likely bring a lighter touch to the Google story than other writers. He's working with Soderbergh again on the globe-trotting thriller "Contagion," which follows a virus that threatens to take over the world... kind of like Google. Burns also produced the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which featured plenty of global warming facts that were probably found... by using Google. How meta!