Steve McQueen Biopic Gets Financing As A-List Talent Circles

by Anita Busch 
EXCLUSIVE: It’s a project that has gotten the attention of some top directors and actors looking to bring the story of the larger-than-life actor Steve McQueen to the big screen.

And now, the project — McQueen — has secured financing and will move forward. 

Director James Gray (The Immigrant) and his Immigrant co-star Jeremy Renner have circled the project as have other A-listers. Others who have been talked about or expressed interest in the past have been Channing Tatum and Ryan Gosling. First things first, however. Financing has come together through a deal that was just made between Lake Forest Entertainment and The Exchange. 

The curiosity and interest around town comes from a unique story that is being kept under wraps about McQueen’s life that he wrote about at the time of his death in his own hand.

The Exchange and Lake Forest have teamed to produce the biopic of the movie star which will be partly based on the 2010 biography Steve McQueen: The Life And Legend Of A Hollywood Icon, written by Marshall Terrill. The author spent 10 years doing research for the book which follows the actor’s life from small beginnings in the Midwest (Indianapolis) to Hollywood to his death at the age of 50 in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico from a heart attack after cancer surgery. McQueen was one of the first of Hollywood’s elite to look into alternative therapy to battle cancer.

The Exchange’s Brian O’Shea and Jeff Bowler (head of acquisitions) will produce with Graham Kaye’s Lake Forest. The Exchange (Spectacular Now, Obvious Child) will also be handling foreign and domestic sales. McQueen marks Lake Forest’s first project. They will be hiring a screenwriter soon.