Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman will lead a HBO feature film production centering on the famous relationship between literary icons Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn.
Aptly titled “Hemingway and Gellhorn” and with Phillip Kaufman (“The Unbearable Lightness Of Being,” “Quills”) at the helm, the film is being produced by ‘Sopranos’ star James Gandolfini who put the project together in 2004 with himself attached to star. The film has now found a home at HBO and hopes to follow the successes of the award-winning “Grey Gardens,” a project which followed a similar path of development.
Hemingway and Gellhorn shared a tumultuous relationship and five-year marriage which began after meeting at a local Key West bar in 1936. They married in 1940 after romancing in Europe with Hemingway’s famous novel “For Whom The Bell Tolls” written during that time. Their respective correspondent work, however, meant they spent significant time apart which was ultimately a driving factor behind their divorce in 1945. Both tragically ended their own lives — Hemingway in 1961, struggling with psychological and physical deterioration and Gellhorn years later in 1998 after a long battle with cancer and blindness.
Shooting on “Hemingway and Gelhorn” will begin next year in Northern California from a script by Barbara Turner and Jerry Stahl and is yet another project to join HBO’s exciting slate.