James Mangold is taking on another true-life story.
The filmmaker behind this year’s Logan and the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005) will be directing an as-yet untitled Patty Hearst drama for Fox 2000, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Elle Fanning is in talks to star as Hearst, the heiress who in 1974 was kidnapped by revolutionaries known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, a group that detained her for two years. The SLA shocked the world when it released a tape of Hearst saying she had joined the group, a revelation that placed Hearst at the center of a counterculture revolution. Soon she was participating in armed bank robberies, and after her capture Hearst became the center of a dramatic trial.
The film is based on author Jeffrey Toobin’s American Heiress, with a screenplay by Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander, along with Mangold. The director is producing with Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Colorforce.
Mangold is coming off of Logan, the biggest film of his career, which earned critical acclaim and $616.8 million worldwide. He also is developing a Logan spinoff focused on the young mutant Laura (Dafne Keen) and is attached to direct the children’s book adaptation Crenshaw for Fox.
Fanning had a big hit with 2014’s Maleficent and recently starred in last year’s The Neon Demon and 20th Century Women. She stars in the upcoming biopic Mary Shelley as the Frankenstein author, as well as in Woody Allen’s A Rainy Day in New York.
