FREAKONOMICS
Since its original publication, FREAKONOMICS spent more than two years in the top 10 of the New York Times Bestseller List and has sold nearly 4 million copies worldwide. In the U.S. alone, it has sold over 1.5m in hardcover, and over 400,000 paperbacks have been sold in the U.K. It has reached #1 on Amazon.com and spent more than a year in the national top 10. USA today recently dubbed FREAKONOMICS the most influential book on business of the last decade. According to The New York Times it was the world’s most blogged book in 2005 and 2006.
There will be four segments each from a different award winning documentary filmmaker tackling a different big idea from the book. The sections will last approximately 20 minutes each; combined with intro and interstitials the film will be 90-95 minutes long. Each one will be stamped with the inimitable authorial style of the director and each section will seek to challenge a particular aspect of tired conventional thinking. They will be woven together by a series of transitions introducing each topic through the eyes of the book’s authors, prize winning economist Stephen Levitt and veteran New York Times Journalist Stephen Dubner.
Oscar nominated team HEIDI EWING and RACHEL GRADY’s segment seeks to debunk the real power of incentives and puts Levitt’s philosophy to the test in a failing Chicago public school where students are offered cash rewards for their academic achievements. MORGAN SPURLOCK’s segment reveals how even our parent’s choice of name could seal forever our social and economic fate. 2008 Oscar winner ALEX GIBNEY reveals that a surprisingly similar corruption is to be found at the centre of two very disparate worlds – Sumo wrestling and teaching, further exploring the power of incentives – and their dark side. 2005 Sundance winner and successful author EUGENE JARECKI directs a chapter that makes an amazing link between the legalization of abortion and the drastic reduction of inner city crime in urban America in the mid 90’s, an argument which caused a maelstrom of controversy and provoked a slew of right-wing outrage when the book was first published. SETH GORDON [The King of Kong, Four Christmases] will be directing the introduction and interstitial material.
