Director Andrew Dominik (“Killing Them Softly”) has been sitting on his next feature film “Blonde” for quite some time. The drama has Ana de Armas playing Marilyn Monroe and is expected to be very dark and nightmarish. It was recently reported that “Blonde” wouldn’t be making its debut at the Cannes Film Festival; Dominik seems to be aware his movie would be receiving an NC-17 cut and bristled against that last year. He called that would-be status for the film “a bunch of horseshit… That’s just the ratings board being political,” he told Screen Daily earlier this year. “If I look at an episode of [HBO show] Euphoria, it’s far more graphic than anything going on in Blonde.” Well, either way, now it’s official.
The Film Ratings website of the MPA has posted a list of new ratings for upcoming movies that include “Blonde,” which has officially landed an NC-17 rating. This is normally reserved for extremely violent and sexualized films. Citing the reason for “some sexual content,” it remains to be seen how graphic that sexual content will be, but it was enough to warrant a higher rating than R.
This would seemingly make “Blonde” the first NC-17 rated Netflix original (Netflix has had NC-17 films play on their service, but it’s unclear if an original has ever had that rating). Dominik had hoped the film could be first screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival event in May, but Netflix and Cannes are constantly butting heads over theatrical windows in France, so that won’t be happening.
“It’s a demanding movie,” Dominik previously said, commenting on the potential NC-17 rating during an interview with Screen Daily. “If the audience doesn’t like it, that’s the fucking audience’s problem. It’s not running for public office… It’s an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe; it’s kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story.”
The director also thought it was “hilarious” that some believe an untrue rumor that “Blonde” will include a scene featuring bloody menstrual cunnilingus. However, Dominik did confirm a rape scene, taken from the 2000 Joyce Carol Oates book that the film is based on.
Of course, her film career is also expected to be explored by showing behind-the-scenes production of her string of hits. Hopefully, that wait for “Blonde” won’t be too long, but if it’s skipping Cannes, the Venice Film Festival in September seems like a sure bet as Netflix has saved many of their high-profile films for that event in recent years.