VARIETY: Jonah Hill, ‘D Train’ Filmmakers to Adapt Vegas Hacker Story (EXCLUSIVE)
Hot off their Sundance Film Festival premiere, “The D Train” directors Andrew Mogel and Jarrad Paul are rolling on to their next bigscreen project, this time with Jonah Hill.
Mogel and Paul tell Variety they plan to adapt the Wired magazine article “Finding a Vegas Poker Bug Made These Guys Rich — Then Vegas Made Them Pay,” to which they recently bought the rights as a potential directing vehicle.
Hill is exec producing the film through his 75 Year Plan banner. Mogel and Paul will also produce.
Written by Kevin Poulsen, the Wired magazine article was first published in October, 2014 and tells the story of two hackers who found a glitch in video poker machines before amassing nearly $1 million in cash. They were eventually arrested in 2009.
The two men, Andre Nestor and John Kane, weren’t technically cheating at the casinos, says Mogel, “It was a sequence of buttons they would use to cash out, like an ATM.”
“It’s a really great story,” Paul added.
Mogel and Paul recently worked with Hill on Fox’s animated series “Allen Gregory.” Their directorial debut, “The D Train,” starring Jack Black, was acquired by IFC Films following its Sundance premiere.
The filmmaking duo previously wrote “Yes Man” and are attached to another Jim Carrey comedy, the untitled “Bruce Almighty” sequel. They’re repped by UTA, Mosaic and Ziffren Brittenham.
Hill, whose film “True Story” also premiered at Sundance this year, is currently shooting the Coen brothers’ “Hail Caesar!” opposite George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum.
He is repped by WME, LBI and Karl Austen.