A former PayPal government has purchased the rights to a film about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman — who led Silicon Valley’s legendary “PayPal Mafia” within the days earlier than they turned billionaires.
Jack Selby — who offered his stake in PayPal when eBay purchased it for $1.5 billion again in 2002 — alongside along with his former colleague, ex-PayPal COO David Sacks, personal the rights to “The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Formed Silicon Valley,” based on Bloomberg.
The movie is about to be an adaptation of a e-book by the identical identify, written by former Huffington Submit managing editor Jimmy Soni.
“All totally different sorts of variations are on the desk,” Selby advised Bloomberg of telling the story of PayPal’s origins, saying he’s nonetheless contemplating whether or not to make “a function movie, a serialized model or a documentary.”
“I simply need the story to be advised correctly,” added Selby, who labored because the payment-processing firm’s senior vice chairman and has since based enterprise capital agency AZ-VC.
As advised in “The Founders” e-book, Musk, Thiel and Hoffman collided at PayPal earlier than happening to ascertain Tesla, be part of Fb guardian Meta’s board and located LinkedIn, respectively.
In a biography about Musk released last year, creator Walter Isaacson referred to the trio as key members the so-called “PayPal Mafia,” which reportedly dissolved in 2000, when Musk was faraway from his place as chief government of PayPal in a “coup” orchestrated by Thiel, a outstanding Silicon Valley investor, in addition to co-founder Max Levchin, then-board member Hoffman, and Sacks, then PayPal’s COO and product chief.
Three years later, Musk based Tesla, which enjoyed a stint as the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, lifting its 52-year-old CEO to the very high of the list of the world’s richest people.
On the time of writing, Musk stays the No. 1 richest particular person, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a fortune of $199 billion.
Greater than twenty years after Musk’s tie-up with PayPal — which started when Musk merged his digital funds firm, X.com, with PayPal-parent, Confinity — and Selby desires to place the story on the large display screen.
This isn’t the primary time that Selby has produced a film. Apart from working because the managing director at Thiel’s household workplace, Selby additionally co-founded the manufacturing agency Excessive Frequency Leisure in 2011.
The impartial movie manufacturing firm has since centered on making movies with budgets lower than $10 million, based on Bloomberg.
“Our two current movies, “His Three Daughters” and “Reminiscence,” have been each offered final yr after exhibiting them on the Toronto movie competition. They’ve been fairly profitable, particularly given how troublesome the trade has been,” Selby stated, per Bloomberg.
Selby, whose web value has been reported at round $50 million, added that “making films retains you humble.”
Excessive Frequency offered “His Three Daughters” — starring Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen — to Netflix for roughly $7 million in October.
“By movie requirements, that’s a Peter Thiel-Fb sort of funding, however it’s not 10,000-times your unique cash,” Selby advised Bloomberg.
It’s unclear if “The Founders” will even be produced with beneath $10 million, although Selby revealed that he and Sacks are at the moment “having quite a few conversations…for potential administrators and different elements of the challenge.”
The duo has already tapped famed rapper Drake’s leisure agency, DreamCrew, to work on the movie, based on Bloomberg.
Representatives for Excessive Frequency Leisure didn’t instantly reply to The Submit’s request for remark.
