Decent budget is defined as >$7 million (2023 USD, production + marketing).
Biopic is defined as showing any part of his life, but with him as the main character (eg. The Challenger Disaster (2013) would count as a Feynman biopic, but for the budget [highly recommended, btw]).
I don't know, he's a pretty controversial figure at this point. Womanizing to the extent that he did has soured a lot of people on him. So you couldn't have just a fun movie where he's playing the bongos and cracking safes.
@jonsimon Give him an Iron Man arc. Fast cars and pretty women at the beginning, a happily married professor at the end. You get to show all the fun stuff and still sell it to audiences who think that's bad, win-win
@Frogswap except that was exactly backwards -- he didn't go off the rails wrt women until his first wife died, AFAIK
@ArmandodiMatteo My impression was that it was more of a U-shaped curve, and that he was in a healthy relationship for the last couple decades as well. Iron Man had the same thing, a tragic backstory does a lot for making asshole behavior sympathetic.
@Frogswap There are WAY more interesting things about Feynman's life, and of his character and persona, than the manhatten project
@firstuserhere Oh, for sure. And he would have crowded out Oppenheimer anyway. But there's a huge opportunity here- a character with 10x the sex appeal, lots of the dialogue is already written, and we've just proven an audience exists for such things. I'm thinking about going higher.