Ben Affleck is reportedly eager to take on the role of Hulk Hogan in a new film about the wrestler’s sex tape legal saga with Gawker.
Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company Artist Equity are said to be lined up to produce the film, provisionally titled Killing Gawker, with filming set to start in January 2025 (via PWInsider).
The film would tell the story of Hogan’s legal battle with the American celebrity blog Gawker, who in 2012 released a clip of a sex tape that the WWE star was not aware was being filmed.
Hogan filed a lawsuit against the site, backed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who Damon will reportedly portray in the film. The wrestler was eventually rewarded $115million for defamation, loss of privacy and emotional pain, and the saga contributed to Gawker’s eventual demise.
The Killing Gawker screenplay was written by Charles Randolph, who picked up an Oscar for The Big Short, and was based on Ryan Holiday’s 2018 book Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire, which documented Thiel’s personal vendetta against Gawker for outing him as gay.
In 2020, Chris Hemsworth was rumoured to be taking on the role of Hogan in a biopic, but that project has not yet materialised.
In other Affleck news, last week, reports emerged that he and Jennifer Lopez are to file for divorce after two years of marriage.
It came after Affleck purchased a new $20.5million “bachelor pad” mansion in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, July 24, the day of Lopez’s 55th birthday. Days before, the pair listed their Beverly Hills mansion for $68million.
July 24 also marked the day Lopez finalised the sale of her four-bedroom New York City penthouse for $23 million. “They finalised the divorce papers with her a month ago, but are waiting for the right time to drop them,” one source told DailyMail.com.
“At that time, they will release a joint statement that will say how they have much love for each other and how they fought to make it work, but couldn’t.”