James Mangold to Direct Patty Hearst Movie, Elle Fanning in Talks for Lead Role
We’ve been wondering what the director of Logan would pick for his next project, and although last week it seemed like James Mangold would follow up his gritty superhero flick with a more kid-friendly endeavor, a new report says otherwise. Mangold is set to direct an untitled drama about Patty Hearst, with Elle Fanning in talks to portray the notorious heiress-turned-left wing terrorist.
Variety reports that Mangold is re-teaming with Twentieth Century Fox for the untitled drama based on American Heiress, the best-selling book by Jeffrey Toobin. Mangold co-wrote the screenplay with Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, the writing duo behind The People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon and American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson — the latter of which is also based on a book by Toobin.
Although Mangold has also been toying with adaptations of Don Winslow’s The Force and Katherine Applegate’s children’s book Crenshaw, he’s making the Patty Hearst film his next project.
Elle Fanning is in discussions to play the role of Hearst, a wealthy heiress and Berkeley student who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Symbionese Liberation Army, who transformed her into a counter-culture terrorist in the ’70s. The film reportedly “traces the audacious, kaleidoscopic and psychologically twisted story of a true-life Alice in Wonderland.” Hearst emerged two years after her kidnapping: A tape of the heiress participating in armed robberies with the group led to her arrest. Her trial was a media sensation.
Fanning has a proclivity for edgier roles and films, and has recently appeared in 20th Century Women, The Neon Demon and John Cameron Mitchell’s upcoming adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties.