The production companies that brought us “The Help” and “Lincoln” have purchased the film rights to the story of the Boston Globe reporters who brought the Massachusetts child sex abuse scandal to light. Maybe this will be the next “All the President’s Men?”
The Boston Globe reports:
DreamWorks Studios and Participant Media have acquired the film rights to the story of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal in Massachusetts, DreamWorks president of production Holly Bario announced Tuesday. The movie based on the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories will be directed by Tom McCarthy, a BC grad whose credits include “The Station Agent,” with a screenplay by Josh Singer. It will be produced by Anonymous Content’s Michael Sugar and Steve Golin and Rocklin/Faust’s Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust. “The Boston Globe’s coverage of the Catholic priest scandal opened the door to a bigger story that had worldwide ramifications,” Bario said in a statement Tuesday. “The story of how this team of editors and reporters came to uncover the truth will make a dramatic and compelling film, especially with the talents of our director Tom McCarthy and his co-screenwriter Josh Singer on board.” DreamWorks and Participant previously collaborated on Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” “The Help,” “The Kite Runner,” and “The Soloist.”
Variety says that the producers secured life rights of the Globe reporters responsible for the story, including reporters Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer and Matt Carroll, Globe editor Walter “Robby” Robinson, special projects editor Ben Bradlee Jr. and Globe editor Marty Baron.
Due to the sensitivity of the subject matter, McCarthy has been working in secret for more than a year on the project that chronicles the worldwide scandal….
…When Baron saw an article in the Globe just after starting as editor about a Boston priest who had molested children, he realized a bigger story could lie behind it. He spurred a team of reporters to spend a year interviewing scores of victims and poring over thousands of pages of documents.
The Globe team eventually discovered that Cardinal Bernard Law had hidden years of serial abuse by moving guilty priests from one parish to another, where they often abused again.
The team’s articles won them the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for meritorious public service and set off a tidal wave of revelations around the world.