Jason Bateman Invests in the 'IPO Man'

Although he'll appear in Horrible Bosses 2 and recently starred in This is Where I Leave You, Jason Bateman is going all-in on a directorial career. He made his debut earlier this year with Bad Words, and is currently working on The Family Fang with Nicole Kidman, and now he's lined up an interesting new project that is based on true, but very weird, story.

Bateman will direct and star in IPO Man, which is inspired by the Wired article "Meet The Man Who Sold His Fate To Investors At $1 A Share".  And that title was spot on because it told the story of Mike Merrill, who turned himself into an IPO and sold himself as 100,000 $1 shares of stock. He sold 938 of them, but the remainder which he owned were non-voting shares, which basically meant his entire life was controlled by the other shareholders. Here's how Deadline breaks it down:

Merrill got into an IPO niche that usually allows investors to pony up money for a cut of someone’s future earnings, for instance. Merrill put himself on the block at $1 per share for 100,000 shares, and sold 928 of them. He started as a curiosity, with friends, family members and his girlfriend buying in. He made it interesting in that even though he still owned the majority of himself, he made that non-voting stock, meaning his investors could decide how he would conduct himself professionally, like when he got a thumbs up on his decision to invest $79.63 in a Rwandan chicken farmer. The controls veered into  his personal life and he lost his girlfriend, who  felt like the loser in a takeover battle. Same majority shareholders then exerted input in his future attempts at a romantic merger (he was even set up with a guy at one point). He was still allowing his investors to call the shot when the article ended. 

The script will be written by Yes Man scribes  Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster. which should give you an idea Bateman is going for.