MadRiver Pictures announced today that Academy Award nominee Michael Keaton (Spotlight) is in negotiations to star in Academy Award winner David Frankel’s (The Devil Wears Prada, Collateral Beauty) true-life biological drama, What is Life Worth. Additional casting is currently underway.
Based on the acclaimed memoir by Kenneth Feinberg, the Black List script is penned by Max Borenstein. What is Life Worth is an Erin Brockovich/Spotlight-type story of Ken Feinberg, a powerful insider D.C. lawyer put in charge of the 9/11 Fund, who in almost three years of pro bono work on the case, fights off the cynicism, bureaucracy, and politics associated with administering government funds and in doing so, discovers what life is worth.
Keaton won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and recently wrapped production on Tim Burton’s Dumbo for Disney, which is scheduled for a 2019 release. He recently appeared in Spider-Man: Homecoming for Columbia Pictures, Michael Cuesta’s American Assassin, and Tom McCarthy’s Academy Award-winning film Spotlight.
Academy Award-winning producer Michael Sugar (Spotlight) will produce alongside Marc Butan, Sean Sorensen, Max Borenstein, and Bard Dorros. Kim Fox will executive produce along with Riverstone’s Nik Bower and Deepak Navar, with Riverstone is financing. Sean Sorensen acquired the rights to Kenneth Feinberg’s acclaimed memoir and developed the Black List script with screenwriter Max Borenstein.
The Feinberg memoir is summarized as the real story of “the attorney appointed to administer the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, detailing his encounters with victims’ families and the means he used to derive the amount of compensation they received.”
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