Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment have tapped "Rush Hour" and "X-Men 3" director Brett Ratner to direct a biopic based on the life of the iconic founder of Playboy Magazine, Hugh Hefner.
The movie will be titled, simply, "Playboy."
The project fell into limbo recently when Oliver Stone abandoned it to focus on his next movie, an examination of the United States' post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan.
Ratner and screenwriter John Hoffman came up with a script that won the approval of producer Brian Grazer and Hefner himself, who gave the project his blessing at a Playboy Mansion meeting.
Ratner told Daily Variety that he wants to capture all of the magazine mogul's legend.
"Hef came from a puritanical upbringing and reinvented himself to be the godfather of the sexual revolution," Ratner said. "He also used his magazine to advocate civil rights and free speech, and put James Brown on his show 'Playboy After Dark' when they didn't put black performers on national television.
"He broke all kinds of taboos, especially in sexuality. I want to show it all, from the 1st Amendment struggles to his first orgy to the stroke in the 1980s that almost killed him."
