I remember hearing something about Naomi Watts playing Marilyn Monroe months (years?) ago. I never realized that the Monroe project that Watts was attached to was a film adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde. I read Blonde several years ago, and while I was blown away by Oates’ take on Marilyn, the book is incredibly dark and the portrait of Marilyn is that of a very tortured, confused, mentally deficient woman. I’m just saying – the book (at 700 pages) doesn’t lend itself to easy adaptation, and even if you manage to wrangle a decent script, who would you even get to play this dark version of Marilyn? Well, Brad Pitt is up the task. I mean, Brad’s not going to play Marilyn, but he has signed on to produce the thing:

Marilyn Monroe has been everywhere lately, from the fictitious musical on “Smash” to the 2011 Michelle Williams movie… But she could be getting another treatment if Brad Pitt and Andrew Dominik have anything to say about it.

The A-list actor has come aboard to produce the filmmaker’s long-gestating drama about the blond bombshell. “We’re going to get this one done,” Pitt told 24 Frames in a joint interview with Dominik. Pitt said it’s unclear whether he would take a role in the movie as well (suggestions welcome on who he should play) or simply produce. Pitt’s been on a bit of a producing hot streak lately: His company, Plan B, was behind two best picture nominees in 2012 (“The Tree of Life” and “Moneyball”).

Pitt and Domink collaborated on “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and the upcoming hit-man movie “Killing Them Softly.” “Blonde” would mark a shift from those hard-boiled genres; it would look at an imagined inner life of the iconic actress, an inner life first imagined by Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote an acclaimed 2000 novel on which the film would be based.

Oates’ “Blonde,” which also got the TV mini-series treatment a decade ago, has been in feature development since at least 2009, when Dominik began writing a script based on the book. Soon after, the foreign-sales company Wild Bunch began peddling the project. But it’s back on the front burner thanks to Pitt’s interest and to some new financing possibilities. Dominik wouldn’t comment on the specific progress of the project, but said that shooting it in January or February of 2013 was not out of the realm of possibility.

When it was first incarnated with Wild Bunch, Naomi Watts was slated to play the lead part of Marilyn. But that was a long time ago, and it’s unclear at this point if the filmmakers would continue in that direction.

It should be noted that “My Week With Marilyn” was hardly a blockbuster performer: It grossed $14 million and garnered mediocre reviews. But that film covered only a small slice of the actress’ life. And, in any event, expect a different kind of film from the Australia-based Dominik, who departed from convention with both “Jesse James” (a non-Western Western) and “Killing Them Softly” (which turns the hit-man movie into a meditation on capitalism). Meanwhile, interest in Monroe continues to grow with the 50th anniversary of her death approaching on Aug. 5.

Since coming on the scene with his cult hit “Chopper” in 2000, Dominik hasn’t exactly worked at a feverish pace. He took seven years to make “Jesse James” and five for “Killing.” “He’s got a terrible habit for writing things on spec,” Pitt said with a good-natured smile, implying that the rights issues on “Blonde” may have bogged it down too. (Dominik wrote his first draft on spec, that is, without locking down rights.)

But Pitt’s brand of surfer-boy intellectual and Dominik’s auteur intensity clearly combine for a kind of chemistry, with both of their collaborations yielding solid reviews. Pitt said that “I think ‘Jesse’ is going to be the film I’m most proud of when I’m done with this [acting] thing.”

Frustrated by the meager box-office for “James,” Dominik hopes that “Killing,” which hits theaters in September as a Weinstein Co. release, rekindles the industry’s interest in the pair’s work.

“I wanted to make a $15-million movie. I wanted to make a movie that was cheap and could make its money back, because I’d like to keep working with Brad and I’d like us to have more expensive playdates than the last one,” he said. “I would like to make someone some money.”

Generally, he said, he struggles with the balance between passion and pragmatism, which he said may be why he’s made just two movies since “Chopper.”

“I’d like to make movies, man,” he said. “But I don’t want to just make movies. I want to make the movies I want to make.”

[From The Los Angeles Times]

Brad has turned into one of the most interesting producers out there – he’s not just looking to produce the films he acts in (although he does that too). He’s shown a real interest in up-and-coming talents and working with “difficult” directors and “difficult” source material that others often avoid. While I think that Hollywood should just let Marilyn rest in peace (instead of trotting her out every year on the cover of Vanity Fair), if you’re going to do a real Marilyn bio-pic using Blonde as the source material, I might be interested. Of course, I really didn’t think Michelle Williams’ Monroe was all that special or award-worthy, so the Marilyn mantle is still up for grabs. Somebody tell Lindsay Lohan to sit down.

Conspiracy theory: a few years ago, there was a rumor that Angelina Jolie might play Marilyn in some other film. I wonder if Brad would be interested in producing another film for his fiancée? Hmm…

Photos courtesy of WENN.