Two Montreal-based companies are partnering to produce a film on the life of anti-virus software creator John McAfee.
Impact Future Media announced Monday it would be working with Equinoxe Films to produce and distribute a $28-million authorized biopic adapted from McAfee’s personal memoirs.
McAfee -- who made headlines in late 2012 when he became a fugitive in hiding -- has given Impact exclusive rights to his official life story.
According to a statement on Impact’s website, the film will depict McAfee’s story from childhood to current day, “revealing unanswered questions and intimate secrets about his life along the way.”
Impact producer and co-founder François Garcia said McAfee “entrusted us” with his life story, and said Equinoxe was a natural fit as filmmaking partner.
Michael Mosca and Francesca Visconti will produce the film under Equinoxe Film’s production arm Starling Road Productions.
The U.K-born multimillionaire received international attention in 2012 when he fled his home in Belize after police named him a “person of interest” in the murder of his neighbour, a U.S. expatriate Gregory Viant Faull.
During weeks spent in hiding, McAfee would blog about his life on the lam, claiming that corrupt authorities in Belize wanted to kill him.
He was eventually arrested and placed in detention in Guatemala, and after successfully appealing an order of deportation to Belize, was flown to the United States, where he remains.
Mosca said McAfee has allowed the production companies to reveal all the “unknown, shockingly surreal details” of his life.
“Although Mr. McAfee’s recent adventures have been widely publicized, the surface has barely been scratched regarding his life story,” said Mosca in the statement. “This is a larger than life tale, and we are honoured to be a part of it.”
Filmmakers are considering Hawaii and Puerto Rico as possible key filming locations.
