John McAfee is back on the headline news this time with his movie “King of the Jungle” and huge Hollywood stars are signing up to be a part of it. Zac Efron has signed on to star in “King of the Jungle” as a Wired Journal investigator, Ari Furman, who tracks down John McAfee at his jungle compound in Belize.
The film, written by duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (Dolemite is My Name) and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (Crazy, Stupid, Love.), 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, WIRED magazine investigator Ari Furman (Efron) 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.
Casting for the purpose of John McAfee is currently underway with start out of principal photography slated for early 2020. STX Films is in negotiations for the domestic legal rights. Though the writers and directors have been attached to the project for years, part of its languishing in developmental hell has spawned from casting, with previous attempts seeing Johnny Depp (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Seth Rogen (Long Shot) and Michael Keaton (Spider-Man: Homecoming) attached, but all fell through.
