Johnny Depp Is ‘King of the Jungle’ in a Film About the Crazy Story of John McAfee
There are good celebrity profiles, and then there are the ones that merit their own movies. In 2012, former antivirus software magnate John McAfee took Wired reporter Joshua Davis on a weird, darkly hilarious trip around his Belize compound while he was a person of interest in the Belizean investigation of an American expatriate’s murder. Who else could play him in a movie but certified weirdo Johnny Depp?
Deadline reports King of the Jungle will focus on the famous Wired article (which is a long read, but totally worth it), having Depp play McAfee as he tours his compound on a trip “filled with paranoia, machine guns, sex and murder.” McAfee was once at the top of his game, the head of multibillion-dollar company McAfee Associates, the company that produces the antivirus software your parents’ computer uses. Years later, he’s in hiding from foreign authorities and slashing through the jungle, Apocalypse Now-style, reporter in tow.
The film will be directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (I Love You, Philip Morris), with a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Ed Wood, American Crime Story). We’re not sure yet whether the movie will model itself exactly after the Wired article or if it’ll use the article as a jumping off point, creating a new character to stand in for the reporter. Hopefully it’s the former.