Much-maligned director Brett Ratner will helm Playboy, a biopic on Hugh Hefner that at various stages had Oliver Stone and 8 Mile screenwriter Scott Silver (who reportedly drafted a musical version) attached. Ratner—a Hyde regular whom Variety wincingly remarks "has a rep as a playboy himself"—has an obvious affinity for Hefner's lifestyle, with many noting that Ratner's semi-palatial home (glimpsed in a recent Entourage episode) is clearly modeled on the Playboy Mansion, albeit on a much smaller scale. The unapologetically brash auteur behind the Rush Hour trilogy seems to be setting this up to be his "Oscar pic," noting:
Hef came from a puritanical upbringing and reinvented himself to be the godfather of the sexual revolution. He also used his magazine to advocate civil rights and free speech, and put James Brown on his show Playboy After Dark when they didn't put black performers on national television. He broke all kinds of taboos, especially in sexuality. I want to show it all, from the First Amendment struggles to his first orgy to the stroke in the 1980s that almost killed him."