No, this isn’t Matthew Wilder‘s “Inferno” that was famously going to have Lindsay Lohan in the lead role, but now is toplined by Malin Akerman and Matt Dillon. Instead, this is the competing project by “Howl” and “The Celluloid Closet” directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman that at one point was courting Kate Hudson and James Franco (who’ve both moved on), and had Olivia Wilde taking a look during the summer. It has now cast up, and the talent on board is pretty strong.
Variety reports that Amanda Seyfriend and Peter Sarsgaard will star in “Lovelace,” the biopic of the notorious “Deep Throat” porn star Linda Lovelace. The project has a script from W. Merritt Johnson (”In Treatment,” “Temple Grandin”) and Andy Bellin (“Trust“) and is based on the very slim, and seemingly out of print/hard to get book “The Complete Linda Lovelace” by Eric Danville. Sarsgaard will play Chuck Traynor, Lovelace’s husband during her porn years who she later accused of coercing her into pornography and prostitution with physical violence and even hypnosis. And depending on who you ask, its either totally true or completely ridiculous.
Regardless, it’s one of the most fascinating and still enduring stories from the early days of porn, centered around one of the most famous smut movies of all time. It’s a particularly brave role for Seyfried to take on, and it will be unlike anything we’ve seen from her. As for Sarsgaard, he tends to be excellent in whatever he’s in and managed to escape from “Green Lantern” this summer with this dignity intact. Epstein and Friedman will likely bring the kind of mature hand his project needs (rather than the more sensationalist Wilder), and though this one was struggling for financing, it looks like everything has come into place and this will be the first of the two biopics to make it to the big screen.
“Lovelace” will go in front of cameras in January, as will Wilder’s “Inferno.” Paz De La Huerta has scored a supporting role in that flick adding a dose of unpredictability to the project. Guess we’ll see how these play out.
