He was the US president who oversaw the end of the cold war and the rise of the Aids epidemic, a ferocious anti-communist during the McCarthy era who nevertheless referred to his darling wife, Nancy as “Mommie”. Now the story of Ronald Reagan is set to be told on the big screen for the first time, in what looks likely to be a sympathetic biopic.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film Reagan will be based on two bestselling biographies of the 40th US president by Paul Kengor: God and Ronald Reagan and The Crusader. No casting decisions have yet been made, and there is no director on board. The project does, however, have a $30m (£19m) budget in place.
Producers have been keen to distinguish their project from the most recent effort to portray the life of the former president on screen, the 2003 miniseries The Reagans. US television network CBS dropped the 180-minute piece, starring James Brolin as Reagan, amid protests from conservative figures. It was eventually shown on a sister network. The casting of liberal Brolin as the president angered some commentators, as did some of Reagan’s dialogue. At one point, during a conversation about Aids, the president turns to his wife and says: “They that live in sin shall die in sin.”
“Only in Hollywood could you make an insulting, condescending movie about a much-loved historical figure, hire an actor who loathes the man, watch it flop and then somehow conclude that Americans don’t want to see a movie about him,” one of the producers of the forthcoming film Mark Joseph told the Reporter. “I watched Americans line up and wait for 10 hours for the simple privilege of passing by his closed casket. They love this man.”
Jonas McCord, screenwriter of 2001 Antonio Banderas thriller The Body, wrote the script. He said he had been disinclined to take on the project until he researched Reagan’s childhood, which he described as “a surreal Norman Rockwell painting with his alcoholic Catholic father, devout Christian mother, Catholic brother and ever-changing boarders the family took in”.
McCord’s tale begins with the 1981 attempt to assassinate Reagan, and tells the rest of his story through flashbacks and flash-forwards. The film is being scheduled for arrival in cinemas late in 2011.
Originally reported by the Guardian. Read the original article here.
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