"Reis" ('The Chief') will star well-known Turkish actor Reha Beyoğlu as the Turkish strongman and show his life up to 1999,” the Turkish media quotes Evrensel Medya Group's producers as saying.
“The film will [portray] Erdogan's childhood in the Kasımpasa district on the shores of the Golden Horn in Istanbul, his spell as Istanbul mayor from 1994-1998 and his imprisonment in 1999,” the country’s national news agency Anadolu Agency quotes producer Ali Avcı as saying.
“الرئيس”.. فيلم يجسد حياة الزعيم التركي #أردوغان. #تركيا_بوست https://t.co/PEP4xC96nC pic.twitter.com/wLSzeoBiTF
— تركيا بوست (@turkyepost) 16 января 2016
In 1999, the current president served four months in prison after he was convicted of "inciting hatred based on religious differences" in a speech he made in the town of Siirt.
A detailed reconstruction of the surroundings where the president had spent his early years has already been put in place in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where most of the movie is going to be shot.
Well-known Turkish actress Özlem Balcı will play his wife Emine Erdogan.
"These days we see characters from global cinema like Spiderman and Superman, who have never lived, on the T-shirts of our children and sometimes in books," said Avcı.
"Instead of seeing him as the president, people will see Erdoğan as a man who grew up in Kasımpaşa and lived in Istanbul," Avcı added.
There are already stadiums and institutions named after him, mostly in his ancestral region of Rize on the Black Sea and in Kasımpaşa.
