A long time ago Fernando Meirelles made City of God and it was brilliant, it catapulted him to fame and made him one of the most famous filmmakers in the international market. Ever since then however he’s gone off the boil. The Constant Gardener and Blindness really weren’t up to scratch and their political ‘worthiness’ made the experiencing of watching them quite like a lecture. But some exciting news comes to us today. Meirelles is set to direct a biopic of Aristotle Onassis who was a Greek shipping magnate and more famously second husband to Jackie Onassis, formerly Kennedy, the widow of JFK. And more interestingly, the project is set to be scripted by City of God scribe Bráulio Mantovani.
The film is set up at Pathé and is described as ‘The Godfather with Onassis at the center’. Well I’m signed. The film is set to be based on a book by Peter Evans called Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys. Evans’s book focuses on the strained relationship (putting it lightly) between Onassis and JFK’s younger brother, Robert. As attorney general, Bobby had investigated Onassis’s international businesses and banned him from trading with the U.S. In his book Evans wrote that their rivalry over Jackie culminated in Onassis’s alleged involvement in getting Bobby assassinated.
Meirelles is currently shooting 360 which stars Jude Law and is set up at the BBC, this will likely be his next project though.
