DELOREAN'S LIFE STORY HEADING TO THE BIG SCREEN

Movie makers are racing to bring the life story of controversial car maker John DeLorean to the big screen.
Three studios are now rushing to make movies about the late American businessman, whose car company at Dunmurry near Belfast collapsed in 1982 after he got embroiled in a drugs scandal.
Time Inc. Studios and XYZ Films have joined forces to become the latest film makers to develop a biographical picture project about DeLorean, who died in 2005 from complications after a stroke at the age of 80.
The innovative car designer lost everything when he was accused of drug trafficking in an attempt to save his failing DeLorean car company.
The British government had backed DeLorean's factory with GBP80 million of public money in the hope that it would create 2,000 jobs.
DeLorean was eventually acquitted of conspiring to sell more than GBP12.5 million cocaine to undercover agents in Los Angeles in an attempt to save his firm.
But DeLorean, a well-dressed, tall and slender, grey-haired man with movie-star looks, died still wanted on fraud charges in Britain.
The Time and XYZ project joins two other projects aspiring to bring the DeLorean saga to the big screen.
Rush Hour director Brett Ratner is using a movie making deal he has with India's Reliance Big Entertainment to set up a DeLorean picture he plans to direct, with James Toback writing the script and Robert Evans producing.
And producer David Permut is working on a DeLorean picture with producer Steven Lee Jones that is using life story rights acquired from DeLorean's long-time lawyer Mayer Morganroth.
Time Inc. Studios forged a deal with XYZ Films last year to come up with film projects using the rights from articles culled from the company's Time Inc. magazines company.
Executives from the two organisations are using that agreement to make this so-far untitled film project based on a story using articles from Fortune and Time magazines, a DeLorean biographical book written by Hillel Levin called Grand Delusions, and an unpublished memoir written by DeLorean himself.
Just as important, Time Inc. Studios and XYZ say they have cooperation from the car designer's long-time friend and business partner Fred Dellis and from DeLorean's son Zachary, who is executor of the DeLorean estate.
The picture will be produced by Time Inc. Studios president Paul Speaker, XYZ partners Nate Bolotin, Nick Spicer and Aram Tertzakian, and Tamir Ardon, who is himself producing a documentary on DeLorean.
Spicer said that the DeLorean story has long tempted film makers but, while he was alive, the car maker would never let a picture be made without steering it himself.
DeLorean's son and friend, however, are ready for a truthful telling of the rise and fall of the entrepreneur, bolstered by 500 pages of the DeLorean-penned memoir.
After his arrest in 1982, DeLorean put up a defence that he was entrapped by the FBI and was eventually unexpectedly acquitted.
Still, his company went bankrupt after producing only 9,000 vehicles, including the DMC-12 model featured in the Back to the Future films.
XYZ executive Spicer said: "It is almost like an updated Citizen Kane story of the great American entrepreneurial hero and how it all went wrong."
Despite the DeLorean firm's failure his DMC-12 car, with its unpainted stainless steel skin and gull-wing doors, gained a cult following.
At the time of his death in March four years ago, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, permanent secretary at the Department of Commerce in Northern Ireland when the company closed, said DeLorean was an extraordinary individual.
"On the one hand, he was a very striking, charismatic, like a motor industry executive acted by somebody in Hollywood," he said. "If he wanted to, he could turn on the charm offensive, but at other times he could be very abrasive and unpleasant."
While Dick Mulholland, a former worker at DeLorean's factory in Dunmurry, said he inspired the workforce when he first brought the company to the province.
"He was a guy who brought a dream, we all lived that dream, we all felt part of that dream, it was our dream," he said. "But when you found out what had really gone on, you had to say to yourself that a lot of the blame (for the company's failure) must lie with John DeLorean."