Freaked Out: Economics Comes to the Movies

No, watching the upcoming Freakonomics adaptation doesn’t mean you can skip your Econ 101 class.

And the winner of the challenging project of the year award goes to producers Chad Troutwine and Seth Gordon, for their decision to adapt nonfiction money science tome Freakonomics into film.

According to Variety, the producers are taking a multifaceted approach, signing up a who’s who of documentarians to work on different segments. Participants include: 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).

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, has been a huge success, selling millions of copies. The book uses economic theories to analyze a variety of issues. Jarecki is planning to work on a chapter about whether Roe v. Wade was responsible for a drop in crime; Gibney is taking on a chapter about whether teachers and sumo wrestlers cheat. The others are still picking their topics.

While at first glance an economics book, no matter how popular, may not seem like a natural for a film adaptation, this one seems to have a lot of potential; the multi-director approach will undoubtedly yield some misses as well as hits, but it’s still an interesting way to tackle this. I’m already looking forward to it already.