Aaron Sorkin Won’t Bash Ben Affleck in Molly’s Game

Aaron Sorkin at the 73rd Annual Golden Globe Awards Photo by Paul Drinkwater / NBC

Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin will be taking on the world of hush-hush, high-stakes poker in his upcoming drama Molly’s Game.

The project is based on the memoir written by Molly Bloom, which details her time running poker games at Hollywood’s infamous Viper Room. Allegedly, celebrities such as Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Tobey Maguire would go head-to-head against other powerful high-rollers, from hedge fund managers to Saudi princes.

While Sorkin plans to take viewers behind the scenes of this secretive gathering, don’t expect him to spill the beans over the likes of Affleck and DiCaprio. The writer recently revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that he won’t name names with Molly’s Game.

“I have gone to great lengths to obscure the identities of those people, because I don’t want the movie to be about gossip,” Sorkin told the Hollywood Reporter. “I wouldn’t want it to [be], under any circumstances, but in this particular case, the reason why she is a movie hero, the reason why she’s worth writing about in the first place, is that by the end of the whole thing—even if it meant saving her life, guaranteeing her own freedom, she wouldn’t have to go to jail for four years, even if it meant the restoration of all the money the government took away from her—she would not name a single [person], she wouldn’t tell a story.”

He added, “She wrote a book for which she could have gotten a $2 million advance. She got a $35,000 advance instead.”

The acclaimed writer behind Steve Jobs and The Social Network said that he was interested in Bloom’s story because of her fascinating path from Olympic hopeful to backroom, poker purveyor.

“She was this close to going to the Olympics, she was ranked third in North America in women’s moguls,” Sorkin said. “She was going to graduate from Harvard Law School with an Olympic medal. It wasn’t going to hurt that she is extremely attractive as well, with a wonderful personality, and just a freak accident in qualifying for the Olympics, just something you couldn’t believe, kept her out of those Salt Lake City games.”