Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World co-author Tom Wright has confirmed that a movie deal is in the works based on the book on the 1MDB scandal and its alleged mastermind Low Taek Jho.

“We are negotiating a movie deal at the moment, yeah. There should be an announcement very soon about a movie,” he told a group media interview in Kuala Lumpur today.

Wright, who remained tight-lipped about the details, joked that it would not be produced by Red Granite Pictures.

Red Granite, which was headed by former premier Najib Abdul Razak’s stepson Riza Aziz, was implicated in the US Department of Justice’s 1MDB civil forfeiture suits.

The DOJ claimed Red Granite had received US$64 million of 1MDB-linked funds for the production of the Martin Scorsese film The Wolf of Wall Street in 2013, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio.

Wright had spent three years researching and writing Billion Dollar Whale with fellow Wall Street Journal reporter Bradley Hope.

In an interview with the BFM radio station this morning, Wright said Low was not a financial genius, since he did not go to great lengths to cover his tracks.

According to him, the Penang-born businessperson managed to pull off these schemes because he possessed an uncanny ability to assess, network and connect powerful people with each other.

"The thing that he did that was so amazing is that he was always able to go into a room, see who was powerful, work out how that power could help him, and connect that person to another powerful person and put himself into the mix.

"That was really his genius," he added.

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