News > Documentary Directors to Team up On Freakonomics

Written by David Morgan

Anthology films rarely live up to their potential. New York Stories and Four Rooms, for example (though Paris je t'aime was quietly enjoyed for the most part). Now, a group of documentarians are trying to beat the odds by collectively adapting Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's Freakonomics. According to Variety, Chad Troutwine (executive producer of Paris je t'aime) and Seth Gordon (director of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) are producing the project. They've enlisted Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Laura Poitras (My Country My Country), Eugene Jarecki (Why We Fight) and Jehane Noujaim (Control Room) to each direct a segment on chapters in the book.

Freakonomics has sold more than three million copies and uses "economic theories to analyze issues ranging from whether Adam Vinatieri could realistically be called football's most clutch field goal kicker to more serious claims that teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat, that swimming pools are more dangerous to children than guns and that the drop in crime can be attributed to Roe v. Wade."

Jarecki will cover the Roe v. Wade segment, Gibney will focus on cheating teachers and sumo wrestlers. The other filmmakers are still finalizing their topics, and the fifteen minute segments will be bound together into a feature. Shooting begins this January.