Barely a week has passed since we brought you the news that Jennifer Lawrence had signed on to spearhead a Zelda Fitzgerald biopic and already, a second, competing period drama has emerged.
The Hollywood Reporter has the scoop, confirming it is MCU stalwart Scarlett Johansson that is attached to develop this rival project. Bearing the title The Beautiful and the Damned after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s celebrated novel, The Beautiful and Damned, the tome documents Scott and Zelda’ fiery relationship during the peak of the Jazz Age, and we understand that Johansson’s feature has full backing from both Millennium Films and the Fitzgerald estate. Hanna Weg (Septembers of Shiraz) has been elected to hash out a screenplay, and the search is already underway for a director to take point at the helm.
Millennium president Mark Gill had the following to say about Zelda’s fascinating story.
“It was the height of the Jazz Age, so you have all of that glamor and sophistication and living large. But you also have the massive drama of fly high, crash hard,” he said. “She was massively ahead of her time, and she took a beating for it. He stole her ideas and put them in his books. The marriage was a co-dependency from hell with a Jazz Age soundtrack.”
As there’s no mention of a production timeline for this Johansson-fronted feature, it’s too soon to tell which Zelda Fitzgerald biopic will arrive first. Both Johansson and Jennifer Lawrence have stacked schedules in 2017 and beyond, but we’re confident a portrait of a Jazz Age legend will take top billing when the time comes for each actress.
The life and times of Zelda Fitzgerald have inspired not one, but two duelling biopics, and we’ll definitely be keeping tabs on each, so stay tuned.
