On Wednesday, FX announced that it is getting into the Getty family business with Trust, a 10-episode series directed by Oscar winner Danny Boyle about John Paul Getty III, the tragic oil-fortune heir, and the saga of his family—once one of the richest in the world.
The network describes the series as “equal parts family history, dynastic saga and satirical examination of the corrosive power of money.” But anyone familiar with the twisted tale of Getty’s kidnapping does not need to be sold on the project’s intrigue.
The series will open in 1973, when the then 16-year-old was kidnapped in Rome by members of an Italian mafia-like crew and held captive for five months in the Calabria mountains. FX says that Trust will dramatize the already stranger-than-fiction chain of events that followed—which began when Getty’s mother received a ransom request for $17 million. Divorced from Getty's father at the time, she did not have the funds to pay the ransom. Meanwhile, police and Getty’s father, the latter of whom was “in a heroin daze in London” according to the FX press release, initially suspected that the kidnapping was a hoax masterminded by the teen heir to get more money. In spite of a later letter from the teen and a phone call in which the kidnappers threatened to sever one of their hostage’s fingers, Getty’s father said that he could not afford the ransom and Getty’s grandfather initially refused to pay for his grandson’s safe return, famously saying at the time, “If I pay one penny now, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”
Ultimately, after kidnappers cut off Getty’s ear and mailed it to a Roman newspaper, the teen's grandfather reportedly agreed to contribute $2.2. million—the maximum that was tax deductible—and lent the rest of the ransom to his son at 4 percent interest so that he could pay for the teen's ransom. Per FX’s press release, the eldest Getty had business to attend to that kept him from sooner negotiating his grandson’s return—specifically, “Paul’s grandfather—possibly the richest man in the world—[was] marooned in a Tudor mansion in the English countryside surrounded by five mistresses and a pet lion.”
The series was written by Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire collaborator Simon Beaufoy. Per FX president of original programing Eric Schrier, “Simon’s script wonderfully dramatizes the notorious and bizarre kidnapping of J. Paul Getty’s grandson. It’s the perfect way to open this limited series, allowing us to see how three generations, including one of the world’s richest men, clash when family, fortune and reputation are in jeopardy.”
