Nigel Farage's Brexit campaign to be transformed into £60m Hollywood TV series
'It naturally descends into farce - but they win against all odds - he is then horrified that the British lunatics are sent to help a US reality TV star fight for the presidency,' says source
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Your support makes all the difference.Nigel Farage has assigned a slew of tawdry monikers to himself and his band of Brexiteer brothers. From “The Brex Pistols” to “The bad boys of Brexit”, the former Ukip leader has relished in attempting to embellish and glamourize his own role in Britain’s decision to exit the European Union.
Believe it not, the latter nickname has caught the eye of Hollywood’s head honchos and Mr Farage will be coming to a screen near you soon.
Mr Farage and Arron Banks, one of the co-founders of the Leave.EU campaign, are reportedly all set to sign a £60 million deal with a major Hollywood studio for a TV series next month.
The film will be told from the perspective of US pollster Gerry Gunster, who advised the Leave.EU campaign, and will trace Mr Farage and Mr Banks role in Britain’s departure from the European bloc. Mr Farage and Mr Banks are expected to be executive producers of the film.
A source told the Daily Telegraph Mr Gunster will be portrayed as a “respected US expert being employed to control these British lunatics in the referendum”.
“It naturally descends into farce - but they win against all odds - he is then horrified that the British lunatics are sent to help a US reality TV star fight for the presidency,” they continued.
“The farce continues and - guess what - they win and suddenly they are catapulted into the alternative White House to change the world, what could possibly go wrong!”
The six-part series, which will start filming next year, will be based on Mr Banks' memoir of the referendum campaign The Bad Boys of Brexit which somewhat unexpectedly became a best-seller.
Iain Dale, a presenter and former Conservative party politician who published the diary, is expected to be an executive producer alongside the two Brexiteers.
Discussing the forthcoming series he said: “Having conquered Europe, it seems the Bad Boys of Brexit are about to woo Hollywood.
“The main question is whether Danny DeVito is available to play Arron Banks. I just hope the writers can capture the humour and chaos displayed in the book.”
Banks, a multimillionaire political donor, was one of Ukip’s biggest donors until he was suspended from the party in March. Prior to pouring his money into the Eurosceptics, he was a Conservative Party donor but announced he was switching parties by donating £1million to Ukip in October 2014.
After the tragic murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, Banks commissioned a controversial poll on whether her murder had affected public opinion on voting. Pressed about whether the wording of the poll had been “tasteless” Banks said: “I don't think so”.
“We were hoping to see what the effect of the event was. That is an interesting point of view, whether it would shift public opinion.”
Like many, he has drawn parallels between the Brexit vote and the rise of Donald Trump, a key ally of Mr Farage, across the atlantic. He cited President Trump’s success in the US as being the result of connecting with voters on an emotional level, saying: “The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.”
In the wake of the Brexit vote, he remained insistent Leave.EU would continue campaigning as a “rightwing Momentum”.
Leave.EU, founded by Mr Banks and property entrepreneur Richard Tice, lost out on official campaign status to rival organisation Vote Leave and was founded on the belief the campaign could not be won from the insular Westminster bubble.
In April, the Electoral Commission announced it had launched an investigation into Leave.EU’s spending on the referendum
The Commission said the investigation would focus on whether the Brexit-supporting campaign took “impermissible” donations and said there were “reasonable grounds to suspect that potential offences” may have been committed by the campaign.
Responding to the cash probe at the time, Mr Banks said: “The Electoral Commission allowed the Government to spend £11 million on a pack of Remain lies. We will be vigorously defending their allegations.”
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