With an Academy Award on his mantle and major roles coming to him pretty steadily, it can be safely said that Matthew McConaughey has advanced beyond his McConaissance and safely settled into legitimacy as a thespian and publicly beloved “alright, alright, alright”-sayer. This does complicate matters somewhat, as the Renaissance was followed by the Neoclassical period. The word “neoclassical” does not lend itself to McConaughey puns as readily as the word “renaissance,” but we’re going to do our best and power through. American cinema has now progressed into the… McConeoclassicheyal period. Jesus, what a mess. Never mind. 

Regardless, McCon is on, and a new report from Deadline indicates that he’s now set his sights on another major role. McConaughey has signed on to star in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a dramatization of a true story about some fake wine. Though no director has signed on as of yet, Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma scriptwriters Michael Brandt and Derek Haas will adapt the odd account of the ersatz wine for the screen. In 1985, storied auction house Christie’s of London sold a bottle of vino once owned by Thomas Jefferson for $156,000. Soon thereafter, they auctioned off four more bottles from the same cache to billionaire Bill Koch for approximately half a million dollars. (A pretty steep price, if you ask me. I can get wine down the block for three dollars! It’d be silly to pay any more than that, because all wine tastes the same.)

Koch was displeased, however, when a museum approached him with an offer to display the historic bottles and his efforts to verify their provenance revealed the wine to date back to 1962. It seems that Koch had been had by the wonderfully named Hardy Rodenstock, a music manager-cum-wine entrepreneur who had falsified the origins of the bottles. Koch relentlessly pursued the charlatan, dropping millions in legal fees to end up with a settlement to the tune of $12 million. So things worked out in the end, then! A disgustingly wealthy magnate tied up in perhaps the most unrestrainedly evil corporation on the planet exercised his power and influence to get the money he deserved after purchasing a mislabeled beverage he had no intention of drinking. In Hollywood, we call that a “feel-good ending.”