Director Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) has been working on the Marilyn Monroe biopic, Blonde, for several years, but he’s had difficulty getting it off the ground. Naomi Watts was attached to star back in 2010, but she’s since left the project behind when it failed to get funding.
The helmer hasn’t given up though and now TheWrap reports Jessica Chastain is in negotiations to take over the film’s central role.
Dominik wrote the script himself, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, which draws on historical and biographical sources to re-imagine the inner, poetic and spiritual life of this silver screen star, telling Monroe’s story in her own voice, and showing how she overcame the odds to achieve immense, global stardom in the 1950s.
The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in 2001, and it was also adapted into a 2001 TV mini-series starring Poppy Montgomery.
Brad Pitt, who starred in both Jesse James and Killing Them Softly, is producing and was apparently instrumental in convincing the actress – who he worked with on Tree Of Life – to take on the role. Filming is set to begin in August.
Before he went off to make Killing Them Softly, The Assassination of Jesse James director Andrew Dominik was developing a film about Marilyn Monroe. It was a semi-fictional take, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Blonde, which imagines Monroe’s thoughts.