Sorkin has displayed his chops with scripts such as A Few Good Men, An American President, and The Social Network, for which he won an Academy Award. The acclaimed playwright also created television shows The West Wing, Sports Night, and The Newsroom, which will finish up it's run on HBO after its upcoming third season.
He previously contributed to another Lewis adaptation, 2011's Moneyball. Seems Sony Pictures is looking to recapture some of that swerve, because Sorkin's in negotiations with the studio to write Flash Boys, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Assuming his negotiations bear fruit, Sorkin will be reunited on the project with Scott Rudin, who also produced Moneyball, The Social Network, and the HBO show.
A former finance man himself who chronicled his experience in his first book, Liar's Poker, Lewis is the foremost purveyor of popular books that break down crazy-complicated financial misdeeds and consequences with clarity and a nimble sense of humor.
Published back in March, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt concerns a small group of Wall Street types who, in the years following the 2008 financial shamblefest, each came to the understanding that the markets had grown even more crooked than before. These upstanding, odd characters band together to reform Wall Street, creating a a new, independent exchange on which now-ubiquitous high-frequency trading would no longer have a supreme advantage.
Juicy stuff, and just the sort of material that both Lewis and Sorkin handle well (the moral component ought to jive with Sorkin's polished, intelligent indignation).
Lewis's previous bestseller, The Big Short, is already in development at Paramount Pictures with The Other Guys and Anchorman helmer Adam McKay writing and directing. Lewis's work never necessarily screamed "movie adaptation," but 2009's The Blind Side made it clear that audiences could grok to his non-fiction onscreen.
Now, of course, the question is just who will direct Flash Boys. Sorkin scripts tend to attract top-tier talent. His Steve Jobs biopic (also at Sony), for example, was initially going to reunite him with Social Network helmer David Fincher, but when he bounced, the studio wrangled Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire helmer Danny Boyle to oversee the unusual biopic.