COLM MEANEY, AIDAN Gillen, Brian Gleeson and Alex Murphy are set to star in a film about the rise of betting company Paddy Power.

The movie will be based on the book Punters: How Paddy Power Bet Billions and Changed Gambling Forever, by journalist Aaron Rogan, who is also the deputy editor of the Business Post.

News of the film was first reported in Variety, which is a trade magazine in the US that covers film and TV.

Colm Meaney (left), Aidan Gillen (top right) and Brian Gleeson Alamy Alamy

In a post to social media, Rogan shared a link to the Variety article and commented: “Something a bit different to start the week.”

Irish production company Playhouse Studios will be behind the film, and Rogan thanked Playhouse Studios and its CEO Peg Cafferty for their “interest in the story”.

According to the film’s synopsis, it will recount the “crazy true story of how one man bet big on brash advertising and brought online gambling — and addiction — to every corner of the globe”.

The synopsis added: “An inherently Irish origin story, it claws open the lid of how a few chancers changed the world as we know it, destroying hundreds of thousands of people’s lives forever.”

Cafferty meanwhile told Variety that “’Paddy Power’ stood out immediately as a story with real scale, authentic dark humour, grit and tenacity”.

She added that “Aaron Rogan’s voice made the book such an easy, engaging read and we feel the writing team captured the adaptation brilliantly”.

Rogan in turn said he was “delighted that Peggy and the team at Playhouse see the same value in the Paddy Power story that I have since I started reporting on them a decade ago”.

“It’s an Irish story with global appeal and the growth of the gambling industry in the U.S. in recent years makes this adaptation all the more timely,” he added.