Photo courtesy of ZDF Studios
Megaupload founder and former CEO Kim Dotcom will be the subject of a forthcoming television biopic aptly dubbed The Kim Dotcom Story.
According to a press release, ZDF Studios is working with Boogie Entertainment and Aristosfilms on a six-part docuseries about the German-Finnish hacker and anti-copyright advocate, who they call "a modern-day outlaw" and an "unlikely hero for the cause of Internet freedom.”
The show will be based on David Fisher's nonfiction bestseller The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom: Spies, Lies, and the War For the Internet, which features interviews with Dotcom about his hactivism and the founding of Megaupload, a popular file-sharing platform known for hosting illegal uploads of copyrighted music, movies, and television shows.
The Kim Dotcom Story will also delve into his legal battle with the U.S. Department of Justice over what prosecutors claim is "the largest criminal copyright case in U.S. history" with multiple counts of criminal copyright infringement, money laundering, racketeering, and wire fraud on the table, per the Associated Press.
But what makes the infamous tech entrepreneur's case extraordinary is that the U.S. government has yet to get the New Zealand resident to stand trial. Despite shutting down Megaupload in 2012, authorities have spent more than a decade trying to extradite Dotcom back to the U.S., to the point of asking New Zealand police to raid his mansion, where they seized a dozen luxury cars and a reported $175 million in cash. And yet, Dotcom still remains a free man to this day.
The Kim Dotcom Story is slated to begin production next year.