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<p>As fantastic as the story of polka star Jan Lewan may seem, it&#8217;s all true and ready made for the big screen with one big caveat for John Mikulak: the right people have to tell it.</p><p>Mikulak&#8217;s certain he&#8217;s found them and can&#8217;t wait to see how actor Jack Black takes on the role of Lewan in &#8220;The Man Who Would Be Polka King.&#8221;</p><p>The movie bears the same title as the documentary Mikulak and Joshua Brown produced on Lewan, a Polish immigrant and singer who swept Polka music fans off their feet and emptied their bank accounts of their life savings in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme, selling promissory notes with returns as high as 20 percent. Lewan&#8217;s story is further complicated by the suspicious first-place finish of his then wife Rhonda in a beauty pageant, a fatal bus crash involving his band, criminal prosecutions, bankruptcy and prison time for Lewan, who was slashed with a razor by a cellmate.</p><p>&#8220;You couldn&#8217;t write it,&#8221; Mikulak said Friday.</p><p>Trade publications this week first reported Black&#8217;s starring role and listed the others involved in the production including Permut Presentations, Red Hour Films and Shivhans Pictures. They have a projected starting date of July.</p><p>Talks to option the documentary began a couple years earlier and the producers settled on David Permut, said Mikulak, who lives in Waverly and works as a multimedia producer/director at WVIA. The documentary was released in 2009 and expanded on the 2007 production, &#8220;The Mystery of the Polka King,&#8221; that aired in 2007 on Tru TV. The feature-length documentary has been shown at film festivals across the country and in Europe.</p><p>&#8220;This is about the third time we had been approached about optioning,&#8221; said Mikulak.</p><p>Permut has a good track record as a film producer and the Red Hour connection is Ben Stiller, a good friend of Black, Mikulak said. &#8220;(Stiller) thought Jack Black would be great for it,&#8221; Mikulak said.</p><p>Black is known for roles in &#8220;School of Rock,&#8221; &#8220;Goosebumps,&#8221; and the voice of Po in the &#8220;Kung Fu Panda&#8221; animated films among others. But his performance in the 2011 release, &#8220;Bernie,&#8221;assured Mikulak that Black could pull off the Lewan role. Black played the role of 39-year-old Bernie Tiede, who confessed to the 1996 murder of his companion, Marjorie Nugent, an 80-year-old Texas millionaire.</p><p>&#8220;I think he&#8217;ll really bring the character alive,&#8221; Mikulak said. &#8220;It will be interesting to see who else they&#8217;re going to cast.&#8221;</p><p>Black didn&#8217;t want to rush into the project and wanted to have a script ready before they obtained financing for the film, according to Mikulak.</p><p>&#8220;I did read the script. It&#8217;s really heavily based on the documentary,&#8221; Mikulak said, noting he looked at it last year and it could have been changed.</p><p>The production people have reached out to Lewan and Mikulak said he&#8217;s been in contact with him as well.</p><p>Lewan, whose given name is Jan Lewandowski, now lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, and has a website advertising piano lessons from the Grammy Award nominee and an upcoming trip to Poland. He also has a Facebook page featuring photos of him and leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. They first met decades ago in Atlantic City, New Jersey while Lewan and his band were performing.</p><p>Contacted by phone, Lewan offered a terse response to whether he wanted to talk about the movie. &#8220;At this point, N-O,&#8221; he said, emphasizing the last word alphabetically.</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_Lewan_Barletta_CMYK-4.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A Times Leader file photo shows then-Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta handing Jan Lewan and his wife Rhonda a proclamation announcing immigration day in Hazleton in 2000. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/web1_Lewan_Barletta_CMYK-4.jpg</photo0><caption0>A Times Leader file photo shows then-Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta handing Jan Lewan and his wife Rhonda a proclamation announcing immigration day in Hazleton in 2000. </caption0><photoCredit0>Pete Wilcox | Times Leader file photo </photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jerry Lynott</p><p>jlynott@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Interest in Jan Lewan documentary led to screenplay and upcoming movie