Actor Dave Franco revealed that of late he had been receiving a lot of texts but they have more to do with Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and less with him. Everybody wants him to play Luigi Mangione if a biopic is made on the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate who became an overnight internet sensation after the murder of Thompson.
Dave Franco told the Hollywood Reporter that he did not have any official offer for a movie role as Luigi Mangione, but he had never received more texts about anything else. He said everyone who had his phone number reached out to him about how he looks similar to Mangione and that he should play the character if a movie is made about him.
As the 39-year-old actor was promoting his new film at the Sundance Film Festival, he was asked whether anyone had reached out to him on how he would be the best to play the character of Luigi Mangione on the screen. “Anyone? Do you mean everyone?” his wife Alison Brie replied. “I have never received more texts in my life about anything,” Franco said.
Luigi Mangionewas arrested on December 9, five days after he shot Brian Thompson dead. He did not plead guilty and is facing trial. He potentially faces the death penalty as federal murder charges were slapped on him. TMZ and ABC News made documentaries on Luigi Mangione and several other works are in the pipeline.
Though Mangione did not plead guilty, key evidence linked him to the murder and investigators found documents showing how anguished he was against the health insurance industry. Though he was never a customer of UnitedHealthcare, he chose its CEO as it was the perfect target. Mangione’s lawyer denounced how the issue has been politicized and Mangione was paraded making a spectacle after he was extradited from Pennsylvania to New York. Currently, he is lodged in the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn where embattled pop mogul Diddy is also kept.
