Best-selling crime novelist Dennis Lehane will take a break from writing about the 1920s, as a recent addition to the Boardwalk Empire writing team, to script something a bit more current. Or rather, a lot more current, telling a story so fresh, it's still unfolding in the headlines. Lehane has been hired to write the screenplay for Silk Road, based on an as-yet-unfinished article by Joshua Davis, which itself is based upon the continuing story of Ross Ulbricht, the Penn State grad who made himself rich by allegedly founding an online black market for drugs. It was that last service that Ulbricht allegedly attempted to make use of personally, in order to get rid of a client who was supposedly blackmailing him. The film will be just like The Social Network, but with a slightly less sympathetic protagonist.
Seeing as how the FBI only recently swooped in on the "Dread Pirate Roberts," seized $3.6 million in ill-begotten Bitcoin just two weeks ago, the Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone author is, like everyone else, still waiting to see how the story plays out. Hopefully, Ulbricht and the Feds are collaborating on a really amazing third act.
UPDATE: An earlier version of this article said that Silk Road also trafficked in child pornography and assassinations, two things which the site prohibited in its terms of sale.