Relativity Media is developing a
biopic about John D. Rockefeller and has tapped director Lasse Hallstrom to
helm it. According to Deadline the director will be adapting Ron Chernow’s book
on the entrepreneur, Titan – The Life of John D. Rockefeller with the Oscar nominated
writer Craig Borten (Dallas Buyers Club).
Titan – The Life of John D.
Rockefeller Book Synopsis Via Amazon
John D. Rockefeller,
Sr.–history’s first billionaire and the patriarch of America’s most famous
dynasty–is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians.
Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and
Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul “etched with uncommon
objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically
insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have” (Kirkus Reviews).
Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to
Rockefeller’s exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full
of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most
enigmatic capitalist.
Born the son of a flamboyant,
bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose
from rustic origins to become the world’s richest man by creating America’s
most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded “the Octopus” by
legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the
oil produced in America.
Rockefeller was likely the most
controversial businessman in our nation’s history. Critics charged that his
empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the
railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of
political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging
investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a
marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
While providing abundant new
evidence of Rockefeller’s misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the
cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky,
eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave
money more generously–his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller
Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University–than
anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating,
complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous
family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to
light.
John D. Rockefeller’s story
captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic
post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that
irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William
Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie,
Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and
Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller’s life into a vivid tapestry of American
society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron
Chernow’s signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the
sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
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