According to a piece published by Tinseltown chronicler The Hollywood Reporter this week, Lerner’s documentary, which has the working title of The Master and His Wolf, aims to “join the dots” between The Wolf of Wall Street producer Red Granite Pictures and the broiling 1MDB fund scandal. Currently under production and having just wrapped-up filming in Malaysia (the shoot will now be massively expanded to the US, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, where probes into 1MDB are ongoing), The Master will train a magnifying glass on the financing of The Wolf of Wall Street and its alleged links to “corruption and money laundering at the highest levels of the Malaysian government.”
Based on research that began in 2015, Lerner is working meticulously to demonstrate the tawdry tangle of interconnections between Los Angeles-based Red Granite (chaired by Riza Aziz, stepson of Dato’ Seri Najib Razak) and the US$100 million it “found” to fund The Wolf of Wall Street in 2012, the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, Najib himself, and DiCaprio, who co-produced the film and received an upfront payment of US$25 million to appear in the Martin Scorsese-directed hit.
The star of The Master, however (and perhaps the ‘master’ to which the title refers), is undoubtedly flashy Malaysian financier Jho Low – purported close chum of both Riza and DiCaprio (who had been scouring financial backers for The Wolf Of Wall Street for six years before Red Granite appeared on the scene) – who gained infamy largely through his million-dollar, champagne-drenched, celebrity-strewn parties in Las Vegas and Cannes. (Low, who received “special thanks” in The Wolf of Wall Street’s credits, is thought to be currently lying ‘low’ in Taiwan).
In a separate article published on April 8th, The Hollywood Reporter details how Red Granite footed the bill for DiCaprio’s 38th birthday bash in 2012 and “spared no expense” in a bid to impress the actor. Jaw-dropping expenditures include over US$1 million on Magnum champagne (paraded by a bevy of scantily-clad women), and a gift of Marlon Brando’s 1955 Best Actor Oscar, secured for a staggering US$600,000. A source for the magazine described the event as “pure debauchery”, but a Red Granite rep denied the event ever took place.
“In The Master and His Wolf, we have a gripping story with a cast of fantastical characters, movie stars, prime ministers and a system of money laundering, with direct links (with) Malaysia via Saudi and Abu Dhabi companies which goes right to the heart of Hollywood’s elite,” Lerner told The Hollywood Reporter.
Lerner has a stellar track record of directing or producing no-holds-barred, s***-stirring documentaries on a range of contentious subject matter – his films include Academy Awards nominees The Square, which chronicles Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, To Hell and Back Again, about a US marine severely wounded in Afghanistan, and Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, about Russia’s infamous feminist protest rock band.
It’s interesting (to say the least) to note that five-time Oscar nominee The Wolf of Wall Street centres on a dizzying episode of real-life corruption and fraud, based on the daredevil exploits of former ‘bad boy’ New York stockbroker, Jordan Belfort (who, upon regaining consciousness and sobering up, penned a memoir of the same name). When art imitates life imitating art imitating life, as the production of The Master exemplifies, you know you have a winning potboiler on your hands.