James Mangold was set to direct a biopic of Patty Hearst, an American heiress who has kidnapped in 1974 by a domestic terror group and forced to join them, for 20th Century Fox. Mangold even casted Elle Fanning in the role last month, but now the film has been cancelled according to Heat Vision.
“Twentieth Century Fox Film and its production partners have decided to cancel the studio’s planned project based on the book American Heiress,” the studio said Thursday.
The cancellation comes after Hearst herself blasted the project and the unauthorized bio by Jeremy Toobin the film was based on, saying it “romanticizes my rape and torture and calls my abduction a ‘rollicking adventure”. Toonin was also crafting a docuseries with news network CNN, a project Hearst also called out.
“I am further saddened and appalled that Fox 2000 agreed to finance and produce a movie based on Toobin’s book (with a similarly themed screenplay, also written by men),” Hearst said in a statement, “and that CNN has agreed to continue to perpetuate a one-sided dialogue romanticizing my torture and rape by hosting a podcast and docuseries through Toobin’s distorted lens. I refuse to give Jeffrey Toobin, 21st Century Fox, CNN or anyone else involved in these projects about my life the power to make me a victim again, or the power to provide a platform where victim blaming is ok.”
Before getting cancelled, the film was described as “trac[ing] the audacious, kaleidoscopic and psychologically twisted story of a true-life Alice in Wonderland [and] will follow Hearst’s capture and two-year detainment by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the mid 1970’s, as well as her transition from hostage to warrior.” Mangold was writing the script with Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander.
