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Ansel Elgort lands lead role in film based on high school imposter article

Ansel Elgort is to star in a movie adaption of GQ article The Great High School Imposter.

Journalist Daniel Riley penned the feature for American GQ in May (18), recounting the true story of Ukrainian Artur Samarin, who was adopted by a childless couple he became friends with when he moved to the U.S., and lied about his age so he could enroll in school.

The Baby Driver star has had a relatively low-key 2018, but alongside his latest project, he now has three other major movies in production; The Goldfinch, based on the best-selling novel of the same name, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and Finest Kind with Zendaya and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Samarin rose to become the top student but his American dream soon turned into a nightmare.

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“He was in contention for valedictorian with scholarships at elite colleges and his dreams of working for NASA dancing in his head until turned in by his fake parents who allegedly had in mind something closer to Cinderella in their version of the fairy tale,” reports Deadline. “Allegedly annoyed that young Artur Samarin wasn’t behaving enough like a domestic servant and began running away, they turned him in and painted him as a potential terrorist.”

Movies like American Animals, Saturday Night Fever, and American Gangster were all born out of journalism features. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Pearl Street Films recently won a bidding war for the film rights to Jeff Maysh’s The Daily Beast article How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions.

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