Scarlett Johansson, who recently came under fire for being cast in the whitewashed role of Major Motoko Kusanagi in the Ghost in the Shell remake, is set to play Zelda Fitzgerald in the upcoming drama The Beautiful And the Damned, according to Indiewire. The Hanna Weg-written film (Septembers of Shiraz) will focus on the Jazz-Age socialite’s tumultuous relationship with her husband, the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their marriage was plagued by infidelities, drinking problems, and mental health issues. The film takes its title from the writer’s second novel, The Beautiful and Damned, published in 1922. Dubbed “the first American Flapper,” Zelda wrote a review of the book, which is set amongst the elite and New York café society:
To begin with, every one must buy this book for the following aesthetic reasons: First, because I know where there is the cutest cloth of gold dress for only $300 in a store on Forty-second Street, and, also, if enough people buy it where there is a platinum ring with a complete circlet, and, also, if loads of people buy it my husband needs a new winter overcoat, although the one he has done well enough for the last three years . . . It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
Watch a clip of West of Sunset author Stewart O’Nan discuss the couple’s relationship, below.