Robert Caro's Power Broker, seminal 1974 biography of a New York city planner Robert Mosesmay be preparing for its first film adaptation.
Matthew Rees is negotiating with Netflix about the project.
Perry Mason star who plays legendary Welsh actor Richard Burton in the Old Vic's one-man show. Playing Burton revealed the news on a SiriusXM podcast Conan O'Brien needs a friend.
Reece, who also starred in Americansto play the role of Moses in the project. It's unclear whether this will be intended for film or television, but given the book's 1,344 page size, it would make more sense as a multi-part series.
“There is a select group of us who have reached out to a very well-known streaming platform,” Reece said. “But at the moment, dear Mr. Caro, he has no problem with the transfer of rights to Power Broker. Agencies and publishing houses do. So at the moment we are at an impasse, because of which I know that Flix called Net are trying to acquire the rights to Power broker. This was suggested. They really want to do it.”
Mighty Broker, Originally published by Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, it is considered by many to be one of the greatest books of the twentieth century.
In 2011, Oliver Stone was commissioned to make a film based on the book for HBO, with James Gandolfini and Peter Guber serving as executive producers, but it was not released.
The book tells the story of how Robert Moses was the most powerful man of his time in the city and state of New York. It illuminates how things really work in America's city halls and government buildings, revealing information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Fiorello La Guardia, John W. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.
It tells the story of how Moses created a wonderful bloom of parks and boulevards, playgrounds and beaches, before building miles of highways, sprawling Long Island, and building public housing.
According to the book description. Moses was kept in fear: his dossier could reveal the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He claimed that he was above politics, above deals; and decade after decade the newspapers and public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his government power into a fourth branch of government known as the Triborough – a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were determined not by voters or elected officials, but solely by Moses – a huge economic force that put pressure on the unions, on the banks, on all the political and economic institutions of the city, on the press and on the church. He doled out millions of dollars in legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts, based on who could best repay him with the only coin he craved: power. He dominated the politics and politics of his time, never being elected to any office.
Netflix has been approached for comment.
