Film to tell story of Scottish hacker Gary McKinnon’s fight against US extradition

Gary McKinnon with his mother, Janis Sharp, whose book is the basis of the film. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

The story of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon and his long battle against extradition to the US is to be turned into a feature film.

It will tell the story of how a young man hunting for evidence of UFOs found his way into the Pentagon’s system and carried out what US authorities described as “the biggest military computer hack of all time” and then faced the possibility of a long sentence in a US high-security prison.