TORONTO – Scandal-plagued Toronto mayor Rob Ford could soon be hitting a TV or movie screen near you.
Canadian indie producer Blue Ice Pictures unveiled plans to produce a film or TV project based on Ford’s political rise and fall after it optioned Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, by Toronto Star reporter Robyn Doolittle.
Blue Ice announced it would work with Doolitte, the Toronto Star reporter who has worked the Rob Ford beat for the last two years, to adapt her book for the film or TV screen.
“If you tried to make this story up, people would think it was over the top. The Rob Ford investigation is something I’ve been working on for more than two years. It’s something I’m obviously very invested in,” Doolitte said in a statement.
“It’s so much more than just a crack video and YouTube clips. I am excited that Danny [Iron] and Lance [Samuels] share that sense of it, and am really looking forward to working with them,” she added about working with Blue Ice Pictures producers Daniel Iron and Lance Samuels on the project.
Also Monday, the crack-smoking politician launched his own show on YouTube with brother Doug Ford.
The Ford brothers, on their YouTube show, talk local politics with a pitch to voters that comes ahead of the mayor’s re-election in October 2014.
Despite the negative media glare that has Ford’s poll numbers slipping, Ford asks voters to “please judge me on my record, not my personal life.”
Ford’s colorful personal life has already been captured by YouTube, as media and user-generated videos have chronicled past escapades by the Toronto mayor, including a booze-addled visit to Vancouver last week, and, this past weekend, Ford unsuccessfully bidding to remove a rainbow flag flying at City Hall to protest discrimination of gays and lesbians at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Mayor Ford has made a beeline for YouTube after the Toronto City Council removed his City Hall soap box by stripping him of virtually all his political powers.
