Gadhafi Goes Hollywood: Dictator's Son Gets in With $100M

The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman:

Here are two names you don’t expect to see together: Moammar Gadhafi. Hollywood.

But guess what – they’re in bed, making movies.

Hollywood’s latest financial backer is the middle son of the Libyan dictator, Saadi Gadhafi, who is backing a movie production fund called Natural Selection to the tune of $100 milllion.

Matt Beckerman, the CEO of Natural Selection, secured Gadhafi”s backing barely one year ago, and has lately won the Libyan’s agreement to accelerate his investment from an initial plan of 20 films over five years.

“He loves movies,” explained Beckerman in an interview in his suite on the seventh floor of the Carlton Hotel at the Cannes Film Festival, where he’d come to look for new projects. “He’s seen ‘Lost’ 30 times. He has stacks of DVDs of American films.”

The odd couple story of how Beckerman, 33, a New Jersey-born Jew, came to be backed by the billionaire son of one of the Middle East’s most notorious figures is an unlikely meeting of financial need with celebrity obsession.

But it’s become an actual friendship and, Beckerman insists, a viable business.

“He’s 35, gracious, nice – and really cool,” said Beckerman, who says the movies he makes with Saadi Gadhafi will be insistently non-political. (Gadhafi was not in Cannes and declined requests to be interviewed.)

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