MOLLY’S GAME 2017

I read the book, which I enjoyed a lot, but it wasn’t until I met [the real] Molly Bloom… We spent a long time talking. I knew that there was a story here about a very unusual movie heroine, and that it was more emotional than it appeared on the surface.

I was not at all familiar with the poker underworld. It was a complete education. But what really got to me the most was when I met Molly and I saw how big a difference there was between what I’ll call the real story and what’s in the book or what had been reported online – the difference between this person that had been invented by the tabloids and the real thing.

I didn’t start writing Molly’s Game with the intention of directing it. After I turned in the first draft, I sat down for meetings with Amy Pascal and Mark Gordon, two of our three producers, to discuss the director. We had a list of five upstanding directors, and we went through that list, name by name, pros and cons. And when we got to the end, I was surprised when the two of them turned to me and said, “But we think you should direct it.” I spoke to friends, directors I respect, writers who had become writerdirectors who I respect. They were supportive.

There was a gravitational pull with this movie. I wanted it to be about a shiny object – to see the glamour and the money and decadence and the sex and the drugs and the poker and the poker and the poker – but I was also seeing a more emotional story, a bigger story, a better story. And I wanted to protect that.