Netflix's Marilyn Monroe Biopic Starring Ana De Armas Has Been Delayed
If you have your hopes up to see the Ana de Armas' Marilyn Monroe biopic this awards season, then sit down. I have some bad news for you...
Netflix has bumped Blonde to 2022. Variety broke the story but didn't give a reason for the push. Judging by Netflix's slate for the upcoming season, it's very possible they just had too many awards-worthy movies (including new films from Jane Campion and Adam McKay) and they didn't want to compete with themselves.
Directed by The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford's Andrew Dominik, Blonde doesn't sound like it's shaping up to be a standard award-bait biography.
Dominik has spoken about how the film will have very little dialogue and, if you've seen Jesse James, you know he's not kidding around when he says something like that. The man is a very visual storyteller and can wring all sorts of emotion just from the way he moves the camera or lingers on an actor's face. Still, he also promises the film will be his most accessible to larger audiences.
Patience is a Virtue, or So They Say
Blonde is based on Joyce Carrol Oates' biography of the same name. The project had a decade-long road to production involving a rotating door of the best actresses working today, including Naomi Watts and Jessica Chastain, until de Armas was attached and the movie finally got its greenlight.
Oates has seen a rough cut of the movie and spoke very highly of it, calling it "startling, brilliant, very disturbing and perhaps most surprisingly an utterly 'feminist' interpretation...not sure that any male director has ever achieved anything [like] this."
High compliments from someone who could easily be this film's toughest critic.
Ana De Armas will be joined onscreen by Bobby Cannavale (playing Joe DiMaggio), Adrien Brody (playing Arthur Miller), Julianne Nicholson, Scoot McNairy, and Garrett Dillahunt.
Netflix hasn't set a date for 2022 yet, but if it's as good as it sounds, you can bet they're going to position it in awards season. That's good for the movie but kinda sucks for us waiting for it since that likely means we won't see it until the end of 2022.
We're a patient bunch, us cinephiles. So as long as we do get it and it lives up to that cast and early praise, then that's all that matters.