George Santos will be back on-screen soon.
Not in a livestream from the floor of the House of Representatives, from which he was expelled last week over his various lies—but instead on a silver screen.
HBO Films has picked up the rights to The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, a book by Newsday columnist Mark Chiusano that was published last week.
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The film will be executive produced by Frank Rich, of Veep and Succession fame, alongside Bad Education writer Mike Makowsky, according to Variety. Chiusano will serve as a consulting producer.
“Could not think of a better team for this,” Chiusano wrote on X.
The movie’s logline describes it as a “story of a seemingly minor local race that wound up a battle for the soul of Long Island, and unexpectedly carved the path for the world’s most famous (and now disgraced) congressman.”
“The Gatsby-esque journey of a man from nowhere who exploited the system, waged war on truth and swindled one of the wealthiest districts in the country to achieve his American Dream,” it read.
A release date, director, and cast have not been announced, though social-media speculation over who could play the serial fabulist has already run rampant.
Much of that conjecture has offered up Nelson Franklin, who starred in Veep and played Santos on an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this year. In a Vulture interview in January, Franklin said he hadn’t heard Santos speak until he was offered the chance to play the now-disgraced congressman for a segment.
“I realized right away that, yes, there are very crucial parts of our faces that are almost exactly the same,” Franklin said. “If he were way better looking than me, I would have been screwed because then it would have been like, ‘Oh, you’re like the uglier George Santos.’ That would have been the end of the world.”
