HBO has finally given the green light to James Gandolfini‘s much-talked-about Ernest Hemingway project Hemingway & Gellhorn, which was meant to be a feature film starring Gandolfini at one point. [Deadline Hollywood]
Now HBO will make it their own, with Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman starring as authors Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, to be directed by Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff, The Unbearable Lightness of Being). Gellhorn, considered one of the greatest war correspondents of all time, met Hemingway in 1936, and the two traveled to Spain to cover the Spanish Civil War shortly after.
Their romance began shortly after that, and the two had an affair, on and off, until 1940, when they were married. The marriage only lasted 5 years and was just as troubled as the affair that preceded it.
The slew of potential Hemingway projects is exciting. He’s a celebrated life with a full life of adventure and tragedy – the stuff that could make a great novel itself and did, in fact, more than once (see A Moveable Feast).
And, besides that, Kaufman needs a good movie under his belt. It’s been a long, long time since Unbearable Lightness.
What do you think of Owen as Hemingway? He and Kidman’s chemistry?