From the outset Milk could have been a bore of a biopic. Recent biopics have a tendency to lose track of their theme while sticking to the basic facts of a character’s life. Just look at The Aviator, Walk the Line, and Ray as examples of impressive productions with an impressive cast that ultimately are cold and no more engaging than a well-told documentary. They tell the story but fail to make you feel it. But Milk, the story of the first openly homosexual to be elected into Californian office, was a triumph. Not only did Sean Penn and Josh Brolin deliver performances so excellent you forgot they were actors, but the story is well told and manages to be both personal and deliver a sense of how prejudice was changed. So it’s exciting to hear that its screenwriter is tackling another famous figure: J Edgar Hoover.

Dustin Lance Black won an Oscar for Milk‘s script, so how will he tackle the first director of the FBI? Hoover revolutionised the way police detecting was performed. But he was also a controversial figure, often going beyond his authority, collecting secret data on senior political figures, and spying on what he considered to be a “subersive”. The Milk link is the giant question mark over Hoover’s sexuality. It was rumoured that he was a cross-dresser, and his close relationship with successor Clyde Tolson led many to believe both were gay.

Black is also directing the thriller What’s Wrong with Virginia and apparently adapting Tom Woolfe’s accounts of Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.