Even as stories about high-profile kidnapping go, the yarn of John Paul Getty III’s abduction is pretty out-there. In 1973, the then-16-year-old was taken while vacationing in Rome and ransomed for $17 million. Getty’s father asked his father — the moneybags in the family — for the sum in question, who refused on the grounds that if he paid off this ransom, then all of his other 14 grandchildren would expect him to pony up when they inevitably got kidnapped. (This, like everything else in the paragraph to come, is real and not a joke.)

After receiving the hostage’s severed ear and a demand for a down payment of $3.2 million due immediately, the most unsympathetic grandfather of all time agreed to pay $2.2 million, as that was the maximum amount that he could still deduct on his taxes. He offered the remaining million to his son as a loan at 4% interest, and Getty Jr. then proceeded to haggle with the men holding the life of his son in their hands, ultimately talking them down to $2.9 million. Industrial capitalists, am I right?

Anywho, Ridley Scott’s making a movie out of this bizarre ordeal of distasteful frugality and lopped-off cartilage, and Deadline has the exclusive that A-listers have begun to flock to the project currently titled All the Money in the World. Though nobody has put ink to paper as of yet, Michelle Williams, Kevin Spacey, and Mark Wahlberg have all entered negotiations for roles in the dysfunctional-family thriller. Williams would play Gail Harris, Getty III’s mother and John Paul Jr.’s wife, a role Natalie Portman was in talks for last month. Spacey would portray the tight-fisted grandfather, and Wahlberg would take on an unspecified role. (How much fun would it be to watch Marky Mark wrestle with an Italian accent as the head of Rome’s forze di polizia?)

It’s a little early for the production to have an established timeline, but with the high-profile buzz already building around this picture, you can be sure you’ll hear about it once there is.

More From KLTD-FM