Game Of Thrones star Natalie Dormer is set to play Gone With The Wind actress and two time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh in a limited series. She will team up with FreemantleMedia and Mainstreet Pictures to develop a series to focus on Leigh’s personal and professional struggles.
The number of episodes of the project has yet to be determined, but the aim is for each episode to focus around the making of a specific project Leigh worked on, such as A Streetcar Named Desire and Anna Karenina. The series will also explore her twenty year marriage to Laurence Olivier, mental health issues, and female empowerment (or the lack thereof) in 1940s Hollywood.
Stewart Harcourt (Churchill’s Secret) will pen the script, which will draw from archival material, the films Leigh made, and also the 2013 biography by Kendra Bean, Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait. FreemantleMedia and Mainstreet Pictures are the producers of American Gods, and will have international distribution rights for the series, which has yet to be assigned a title.
FremantleMedia EVP and Creative Director of Global Drama, Christian Vesper, told Deadline: “The story of the legendary movie star will be a compelling exploration of the woman who was transcendently known for some of the most memorable screen performances of all time”.
Mainstreet’s Sally Haynes and Laura Mackey added: “We are incredibly excited to be collaborating with the brilliant Natalie Dormer to play an iconic star like Vivien Leigh and to bring this extraordinary unknown story to a wider audience”.
This is a well-timed announcement for Dormer, whose new limited adaptation of Picnic At Hanging Rock debuts on Amazon in the U.S. today, while In Darkness, a film she stars in and also co-wrote, was released last week. The actor admitted that she wants to have an expanded role behind the camera in her career, so it will be interesting to see if she becomes involved in the creative process for this series too.
#Peace.Love.Dormer
