The Australian actor is set to play the American TV sweetheart in a new biopic written by Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing and The Social Network, reports the Wrap.
The film will cover Ball’s 20-year marriage to Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, who also played her husband in I Love Lucy, the first show of its kind to be filmed in front of a live audience.
Ball won four Emmys as a performer and went on to become one of Hollywood’s first female TV executives when she founded the studio Desilu, which produced the original Mission: Impossible and Star Trek series.
Blanchett is no stranger to biopics, winning her first Academy award for her turn as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator.
Audiences will next see her as journalist Mary Mapes in Truth, a newsroom drama about the controversial 2004 CBS report investigating George W Bush’s military service. Blanchett also recently completed films with directors Julian Rosefeldt and Terrence Malick.
The Lucille Ball project has the blessing of Ball and Arnaz’s children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr, who will produce the project with Escape Artists, the company behind the Jake Gyllenhaal drama Southpaw and The Equalizer, starring Denzel Washington.
While there was no confirmation from either Blanchett or Sorkin’s camps about the film, Blanchett’s husband, theatre director Andrew Upton, confirmed to Guardian Australia “they have been talking about it for a while”.
“It’s a project that is dear to [Cate’s] heart and a great story to tell,” he said at a theatre event in Sydney on Thursday...
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Great news, but I believe that there were several broadcasts that included a Live audience before "Lucy." Case in point: "Cavalcade of Stars" is listed as having been broadcast on 15 October 1950, in front of a "Studio Audience."
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