Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Crazy Heart writer-director Scott Cooper is getting back in business with Fox Searchlight. He’s making a deal to direct and possibly adapt The Man In The Rockefeller Suit, based on Mark Seal’s nonfiction book about a German-born conman who passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller clan and got away with it for decades. Donald De Line is producing through his De Line Pictures banner.

Cooper’s involvement as a writer depends on the casting of The Emperor’s Children, an adaptation of the Claire Messud novel that figures to be his next film. The Man With The Rockefeller Suit focuses on Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who climbed the social ladder because of his association with the Rockefeller clan. He got jobs on Wall Street, married a rising star businesswoman and traveled in rarefied social circles. His scam finally unraveled when his 12-year marriage ended and he was arrested for kidnapping his daughter. From there, his ruse fell apart and the bogus trail led back to the disappearance of a couple in California in the 1980s. Cooper is repped by CAA and Seal is repped by WME.