George Clooney To Direct 'Hack Attack' About Rupert Murdoch Phone Hacking Scandal

George Clooney has a new project to direct: Hack Attack, a story detailing the British phone-hacking scandal linked to Rupert Murdoch's news organization. The film will be based on the book Hack Attack: The Inside Story of How the Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by journalist Nick Davies. THR had the news, and reports that Clooney and Grant Heslov will produce with filming scheduled to start in 2015.Michael De Luca, president of Production for Columbia Pictures, said,

As the son of a journalist, George has a sharp interest in the role journalism plays in all of our lives – whether that's for good, as in Good Night, and Good Luck., or for bad. With Hack Attack, George will explore the dark side of that world, a business where all of the rules of journalism are broken in the race for an easy and ever-larger payday.

And Clooney explained,

This has all the elements – lying, corruption, blackmail – at the highest levels of government by the biggest newspaper in London. And the fact that it's true is the best part. Nick is a brave and stubborn reporter and we consider it an honor to put his book to film.

So where will this fit in Clooney's body of work? It's far too early to tell, but he's roughly at three-for-five right now, with Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, Good Night And Good Luck, and The Ides of March standing as his more winning efforts, with Leatherheads and Monuments Men both faltering. We might determine that Clooney's films about media and influence end up working out better, so that's a positive sign for Hack Attack.

Amazon gives this info on the book:

At first, it seemed like a small story. The royal editor of the News of the World was caught listening to the voicemail messages of staff at Buckingham Palace. He and a private investigator were jailed, and the case was closed. But Nick Davies, special correspondent for The Guardian, knew that it didn't add up. He began to investigate, and ended up exposing a world of crime and cover-up, of fear and favor—the long shadow of Rupert Murdoch's media empire.

Hack Attack is the mesmerizing story of how Davies and a small group of lawyers and politicians took on one of the most powerful men in the world—and beat him. It exposes the inner workings of the ruthless machine that was the News of the World, and of the private investigators who hacked phones, listened to live calls, sent Trojan horse emails, bribed the police, and committed burglaries to dig up tabloid scoops. Above all, it is a study of the private lives of the power elite. It paints an intimate portrait of the social network that gave Murdoch privileged access to government, and allowed him and his lieutenants to intimidate anyone who stood up to them. Spanning the course of the investigation from Davies's contact with his first source in early 2008 to the resolution of the criminal trial in June 2014, this is the definitive record of one of the major scandals of our time, written by the journalist who was there every step of the way.