If any movie star of Hollywood’s golden age seems ready-made for a biopic, it’s Errol Flynn. His offscreen life was possibly more outrageous than his onscreen one, and on screen he was Robin Hood. Flynn, star of a variety of adventurous “swashbuckle” adventures in the 1930s and ’40s, was just as famous for his real-life scandalous exploits, which included yachting, problems with the I.R.S., statutory rape trials, and a partying lifestyle that could make a normal person’s liver shrivel up just hearing about it.
The newly announced movie In Like Flynn, based on a popular slang term based on the actor’s way with women, starts out much earlier, with a young Flynn heading out with a group of friends on a quest to find gold in New Guinea. Based on yet another unbelievable true story from Flynn’s own life, the production includes his grandson, Luke Flynn, as a writer and executive producer. Variety reports that the film will feature Billionaire Boys’ Club star Thomas Cocquerel as Flynn; Highlander and Teen Wolf director Russell Mulcahy will direct. In the film, Luke Flynn will play an older version of Errol Flynn, post-gold adventure.
Mulcahy told Variety: “I want to bring Flynn’s unapologetic and uninhibited desire to experience a full adventurous and spectacular life to the screen. All while revealing his deeply rooted belief in himself and an ability to survive on charisma and bravado.” That survival, by the way, only lasted until Flynn died at the age of 50 due to his years of drug and alcohol abuse; his autopsy showed he had the body of a 75-year-old man.