Bestselling crime writer James Patterson and investigative journalist Vicky Ward are writing a book on the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, while actor Dave Franco said this week that he would be “open” to playing accused murderer Luigi Mangione in a biopic if one were to be made.
Mangione is currently awaiting trial for the murder of Thompson, who was shot and killed in Manhattan on 4 December last year.
“This is a story about the American Dream Gone Wrong,” said Patterson in a statement on the book, which does not yet have a title or release date. “It’s also a story of one young man’s descent from Ivy League graduate to notorious accused killer to so-called political martyr.”
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of murder, using a weapon with a silencer, and two counts of stalking. The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said earlier this year that she had directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
“Like millions around the world, Vicky and I were riveted by coverage of the five-day manhunt from Midtown Manhattan to Altoona, Pennsylvania,” Patterson said. Mangione was eventually arrested in a McDonald’s.
“This story touches all of us,” said Ward. “It goes to the heart of the social, cultural and political issues dividing the US right now. Nothing is more of a reviled black box than the health insurance industry, and it’s time to open it up, through a crime that has caught the attention of the country.”
The book will be published by Little, Brown in the US, which also published The Idaho Four, Patterson and Ward’s recent book on the murder of four students.
The news comes in the same week that Franco said he would be open to playing Mangione in a biopic when asked on the talkshow Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Tuesday. “No one has approached me about it yet, I’ll say that … More people in my life reached out about this exact thing than anything else that has ever happened. Let’s just say I am open if it’s the right people, and let’s leave it at that.”
After the shooting, Mangione gained an avalanche of support on social media. The online fandom has sparked criticism for glorifying an alleged murderer. “The suspect, who police now believe to be Mangione, was a fit young man and I think it’d be mistaken to overlook the degree that likely propelled the story,” Jared Holt, a senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told the Guardian in December.
“The other feature of Mangione is one that plays an outsized role in every single point of American life: his race,” wrote Ben Makuch in the Guardian at the time. “If he were Black or Latino, this story would likely have played out very differently.”
