‘Zodiac’ & ‘Black Swan’ Producer's Company Options Sex ‘TrafficKing’ Book About Jeffrey Epstein’s Criminal Case

It’s easy to get cynical when contemporary events and scandals in our day and age are quickly adapted for the big or small screen seemingly to capitalize on their hot-topic notoriety. You can be certain that, over the coming years, we’ll be hearing rumblings about projects depicting the Donald Trump presidency, #MeToo movement and Venezuela crisis—the 2010s have provided an endless amount of fodder for potential prestige vehicles.

Before all those, though, and in an especially timely manner, we’ll be getting a TV show about the life, times and alleged crimes of Jeffrey Epstein. The name should sound familiar— you should have seen it all over the news as of the past week: The billion financier, former Donald Trump pal, was charged this week with sex trafficking, according to the New York Times, leading to the subsequent resignation of now-former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who played a part in orchestrating the mishandled criminal case against Epstein a decade ago where he seemingly got a slap on the wrist for sex offender crimes against underage women.

Now, Deadline reports, “TrafficKing” – a book that reports on that child-trafficking case that was brought against Epstein in the late-2000s – has been optioned by the agency More/Medavoy to become a television project, specifically a TV movie or limited series. Mike Medavoy is the of TriStar Pictures, former head of production for United Artists and current chairman and CEO of Phoenix Pictures. He’s produced dozens of films over the years including more recently “Zodiac,” “Shutter Island,” “Black Swan,” and Netflix’s “Altered Carbon.”

“TrafficKing” was released in 2016 and written by Conchita Sarnoff, according to Deadline, who latched onto the Epstein case for The Daily Beast when Epstein was first arrested in 2010. On her website, the book is described as “a child sex-trafficking story of epic proportions and the longest running human trafficking case in U.S. history; more poignant than the Lewinsky Scandal, Watergate Scandal and Profumo Affair combined.”

The real-life drama wasn’t contained to Epstein when Sarnoff was reporting on it; Deadline states it also extended to the writer herself, as she “alleges she was followed, received bribes, threats and was hacked when she sought to first publish her book,” which she eventually did through independent avenues. Her very website states she “risked her life” in reporting the Epstein story. Fortunately, she hasn’t given up and it appears as though justice will finally be served in the Epstein case if recent events are any indication.