Yet Another Ridley Scott Project episode 427 unearths a movie that's been buried for a while.
We first heard about Scott's attachment to a biopic of the Borgia-like Gucci fashion dynasty way back in 2006, before Scott finished American Gangster, when its home was Paramount and the script was by World Trade Centre's Andrea Berloff. A year or so later it was being rewritten by The Interpreter's Charles Randolph.
Since then, nada. But now, suddenly, the project is a priority at Fox, who are shopping around for a third writer, and want to get underway in early 2010. Scott is still attached (which would make this his immediate next film after Robin Hood, before Alien 5, Red Riding, Monopoly or whatever) and it seems likely that Angelina Jolie, in her second big film next year alongside **The Tourist **(not to mention the planned Scarpetta film, based on Patricia Cornwell's novels), will sign on to play Patrizia Reggiano.
Reggiano was the most famous widow in the world for three years until it emerged she'd actually paid for the murder of her husband Maurizio Gucci, in 1995. She's currently serving a 29 year jail sentence. There's no confirmed actor for the role of Maurizio yet, who at the time of his death was freshly victorious in a family power struggle and about to reestablish the Gucci brand after a few doldrum years, but Variety reports that Scott has been talking to his Body of Lies star Leonardo DiCaprio.
High drama or gitzy soap opera? Sounds like we'll soon see.