The Rob Ford saga is making a comeback — on the big screen. English actor and producer Damian Lewis is portraying the controversial late mayor of Toronto in an upcoming film called Run This Town, currently being shot in Toronto, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The movie follows a reporter (Ben Platt) who attempts to expose a scandal involving a politician who doesn’t play by the rules, according to the movie-industry publication.

Ford, of course, was Toronto’s mayor from 2010 to 2014. He had a history of public intoxication and substance abuse, culminating in his being recorded smoking crack cocaine, as reported in Star investigations led by investigative reporters Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle.

The film is currently being shot in Toronto and has no release date.

Ricky Tollman, the Canadian writer-director of the film, said it’s not a Rob Ford biopic, and that Ford is a fairly minor character. The main story is about how millennials like Platt’s character struggle to make a living in a post-recession economy.

“This isn’t the Rob Ford story,” Tollman said, adding that he wants to create a “sympathetic portrait” of the late mayor.

“Rob isn’t just a caricature, he’s a person and he’s a human,” Tollman said. “He cared very deeply about the city he was the mayor of. And this was a guy with demons.”

An interview with Lewis — an Emmy winner for his role in Homeland, the current star of TV’s Billions and a notably sleeker figure than the late mayor — was published in Kit Magazine, which described the prosthetic the actor was wearing for his role.

“The process involved getting his face and head completely covered in silicon strips, breathing through a small hole near the nose,” the article stated.

“The politician’s aides, played by Nina Dobrev and Mena Massoud, try their best to handle him and keep the story suppressed.”

The film was initially reported to be a thriller; however, a publicist for the film contacted the Star and said the movie is in fact a drama — and all characters aside from Ford are fictitious.

The Star won the prestigious Michener Award in 2014 for its coverage of the scandals surrounding Ford. The investigation, led by Donovan with Doolittle, resulted in a police investigation and eventually Ford losing many of his mayoral powers.

“The Toronto Star exposed Ford’s public drunkenness, boorish behaviour, abuses of his office and existence of a video of him smoking crack cocaine accompanied by members of a drug gang,” the foundation said at the time. “The Star did not waver as the mayor countered every story with vehement denials and attacks.”

Doolittle on Tuesday tweeted about the fact that the lead reporter in the movie is a male role.

“I’m glad they’re rewriting the fact that it was a female reporter who investigated Rob Ford,” tweeted Doolittle, now at the Globe and Mail. “Why have a woman be a lead character when a man could do it? Ammaright?”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

After being criticized on social media, Platt replied in a tweet of his own, saying that he plays a reporter at a fictional paper, and that his character does not represent Doolittle.

“The character is in no way based on Robyn Doolittle and does not attempt to co-opt her narrative,” he wrote. He added that he would never be in a film that would “attribute the accomplishments of a remarkable woman to a fictional man.”

Ford died in 2016 at the age of 46 after a struggle with cancer; the story takes place in the last year of his term. The film is the first feature film directed by actor/producer Ricky Tollman.

With files from the Canadian Press