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'The Founder' release date, latest news: New trailer features Michael Keaton building a fast food empire

A screenshot from the latest trailer of upcoming movie "The Founder." | Youtube/The Weinstein Company

The Weinstein Company recently debuted a new trailer for the McDonald's biopic "The Founder."

According to Coming Soon, "The Founder" is inspired by the true story of how Ray Kroc (Academy Award winner Michael Keaton), a struggling salesman from Illinois, met Mac and Dick McDonald, brothers who ran a burger operation in Southern California during the 1950s. Impressed by the brother's speedy food preparation system, Kroc saw the fast food restaurant's franchise potential.

The upcoming film will depict how Kroc managed to place himself in a position to snatch the company from the McDonald brothers and create a billion-dollar empire.

Directed by John Lee Hancock, the upcoming biopic film is likened to movies such as David Fincher's "The Social Network" and Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood." Aside from Keaton, it stars Laura Dern as Ray Kroc's first wife Ethel, John Carroll Lynch as Mac McDonald, and Nick Offerman as Dick McDonald.

In real life, the McDonald brothers were bought out of their own company in 1961 for just a few million dollars. On the other hand, by the time Kroc died in 1984, he was already worth $8 billion. He had even built himself a luxurious ranch in California.

As reported by the New York Times last year, the fast food restaurant empire did not cooperate in creating the film and has even declined to comment on it altogether. McDonald's did not also interfere with the development of the movie, similar to Facebook's choice not to fight an unflattering portrayal of its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, in the 2010 film "The Social Network."

The film was initially scheduled for a release sometime in summer 2016, but the Weinstein Company has kept pushing back the film's launch until early 2017.

After its limited release on Dec. 16, 2016, the Weinstein Co.'s "The Founder" is scheduled to hit theaters nationwide on Jan. 20.