Fyodor Bondarchuk, a famous Russian film maker, said on Friday  that he planned to work on a film about Pavel Durov, now 28, the founder of VKontakte, an immensely popular social-networking website that has often been dubbed “Russia’s Facebook.”

      Bondarchuk said the shooting of “The Durov Code” is planned to start next April in St. Petersburg. He also said the film will be based on a book by journalist Nikolai Kononov, was published last November. The author described it as a biography of “a gifted programmer with a lousy personality,” according to the preview on the publisher’s website.

      The film director also promises to pay much attention to a group of young Russian software designers who worked in the Durov's team and started VKontakte from scratch in 2006, turning it into Europe’s second-largest social-networking website after Facebook.

      The VKontakte social network has about 210 million registered members and a daily audience of 47 million, mostly from Russia and former Soviet republics, according to the website. It is often criticized for plagiarism of Facebook in its design and main functions (thought VKontakte is even more functional now) and also for massive copyright violations, as the website allows users to upload music and videos on their pages.