Netflix’s new Monroe film has already been making waves even though it does not yet have a release date. So far, we know that it will be the first-ever film made for the streaming service that will get an adult-only NC-17 rating. The rating is because of its steamy, sexually explicit content.
The new film Blonde sees Ana de Armas playing the role of the platinum bombshell. She was the breakout star of No Time to Die and Knives Out. The Cuban actress has been seen in a trailer for the movie, which shows the vulnerable side of the screen star’s life.
The release date for the movie is rumored to be in September, and it will likely premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The producer is Brad Pitt, and it is scored by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The movie is directed by Andrew Dominik, who directed the 2021 This Much I Know to Be True, which was a movie about Cave and Ellis’ last two studio albums.
Blonde is an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s bestselling book about Monroe. It is hard to pigeonhole Monroe. She was a model, an actress, a singer, and one of the world’s most famous sex symbols. She has been the subject of numerous films and TV shows. Andy Warhol became fascinated with her image and created the renowned silk screen images of her face. People playing casino slots online will even find a Marilyn Monroe-themed game.
The film is a fictionalized impressionist retelling of Monroe’s life. According to Netflix’s official synopsis, it depicts “the boldly reimagined private story of the world’s most famous sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe. The film is a fictional portrait of the model, actress, and singer during the ’50s and ’60s, told through the modern lens of celebrity culture.”
The other characters in the film are anonymous, just as they are in the novel on which the film is based. However, it is easy to guess who the supporting characters are. Monroe was married to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. In the movie, they are played by Bobby Cannavale and Adrien Brody. They are simply called the ex-athlete and the playwright. Caspar Philipson plays the president; he is the actor who played John F Kennedy in the recent movie Jackie.
Blonde wheels out some real Hollywood big names too. Michael Masini appears as Tony Curtis, who was her Some Like It Hot co-star. Ravil Isyanov takes on the role of the film’s director, Billy Wilder. Gladys Pearl Baker plays Monroe’s mother. Monroe’s childhood will play an important part in the film’s plot. Lily Fisher plays the young Norma Jeane. Blonde tells of a childhood drama that creates a mistaken idea. That idea propels Marilyn into adulthood, and it is through the lens of those ideas that she perceives the world.
De Armas says that she needed to learn everything that she could about Marilyn in order to play her in the film. She says that it was not just about the physical transformation. She said that she needed to understand her vulnerabilities as well. She made a point of discovering her intelligence and fragility. The actor’s dog has a role in the film too. De Armas’s dog Elvis plays Monroe’s pooch Mafia.
Dominik has spent more than a decade bringing the story to our screens. The $22 million Netflix budget will undoubtedly have eased the wheels of his passion project. In an article in The Playlist back in 2012, he described it as an emotional, sprawling nightmare fairy-tale type movie. He said that it was the story of an abandoned orphan who gets lost in the woods.
Safe to say, it is not going to be another sanitized version of the story like made for TV movie My Week with Marilyn. The NC-17 rating promises a very different interpretation. Dominik jokes that there is something to offend everyone.