River Road Picks Up Screen Rights to 'Fordlandia'

River Road Entertainment, the company behind Tree of Life, is hoping to bring to the screen an adaptation of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City.

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Ben Coccio, who wrote the upcoming Ryan Reynolds-Bradley Cooper drama The Place Beyond the Pines, has been tapped to pen the script based on the Greg Grandin non-fiction tome.

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The book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, told the true story of Henry Ford and his quest to create a town in the Amazon jungle that would be a pure form of American industrial capitalism, but square dances eventually gave way to the inherent forces of nature.

River Road wants to re-imagine the book as more than a cautionary tale but also as a tale that set the Amazon on its present day path.

Bill Pohlad of River Road will produce. Sarah Hammer will oversee production for the company.

Coccio, whose Pines will premiere at next month’s TIFF, is repped by CAA, Media Talent Group and Hansen Jacobson. Grandin is repped by APA and the Susan Rabiner Agency.