Matt Damon joins 'Charlatan' team

Actor Matt Damon will be seen essaying the role of a con-man doctor in "Charlatan".

He will star as John R. Brinkley, a real-life 20th century doctor who conned his patients into thinking that he had discovered the cure to impotence.

The movie marks another collaboration for Damon as a producer with Kimberly Steward, who worked together behind-the-camera on the Oscar-winning drama "Manchester by the Sea", reports variety.com.

Steward's company K. Period Media, which she launched in 2013 with a mandate to tell edgy stories, will co-produce the movie with Damon's Pearl Street Films alongside Jennifer Todd.

The independent film is based on a best-selling 2008 non-fiction book "Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam" by Pope Brock.

Brinkley started a clinic in Kansas in 1918 with the promise of restoring male virility (among curing other ailments) using a quack surgery involving the implantation of goat testicles.

The scheme quickly made him rich, until he was accused in court of the deaths of several of his patients from botched procedures.

--IANS

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