Race is on to reveal all about WikiLeaks founder Assange

The WikiLeaks founder is hosting a lavish 40th birthday party with celebrity guests and supporters ahead of Tuesday's hearing

The race to bring the story of Wiki-Leaks founder Julian Assange to the screen is on.

DreamWorks, HBO, the BBC and Universal Pictures all want to tell the story of the Australian's fight against secrecy. Newspapers and journalists which collaborated with Assange over his campaign to publish thousands of classified documents, are cashing in by selling their stories to Hollywood.

The studios believe a film showing WikiLeaks' rise to notoriety could match the success of The Social Network, which charted the birth of Facebook.

DreamWorks, co-founded by Steven Spielberg, has bought the rights to two books critical of Assange's behaviour – WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy and Inside WikiLeaks by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a "defector" who fell out with Assange.

HBO and the BBC are working on a film based on a New Yorker magazine article. Mark Boal, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker, has a project based on a New York Times article. Meanwhile, Universal Pictures is working on a documentary, which could be made with Assange's cooperation.