Keira Knightley has been tapped to star in Colette, a biopic of the French author of Gigi.
According to Deadline, Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland will direct the film, which will follow the life of the renown French author, whose novels were initially said to be “co-written” by her and her first husband, Willy Gauthier-Villars.
According to Variety , the film will show how Colette’s novels, which considered female sexuality and subverted gender conventions, reflected her and her husband’s sexual life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Paris.
Killer Films and Number 9 Films, the production teams that recently collaborated to make Carol, will team up with financing co-producer Bold Films. Pam Koffler and Christine Vachon serve as producers for Killer Films, Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley will represent Number 9. Bold films chairman Michael Litvak will also produce.
“Keira is impeccably suited to step into the role of the iconic Colette in the early 1900s, who pushed the envelope in a time when women writers were shunned and bisexuality was scandalous,” Litvak told Variety.
Filming on Colette begins in May, 2016.