A biopic of Joan Didion is in the works, Deadline reports.
Matthew Wilder (Your Name Here, American Martyr) will write and direct the film, which will tell the story of a day in the life of the iconic essayist and novelist. In the film, Didion will encounter Black Panthers and Nancy Reagan. An epilogue for the movie will be set in an AI-fueled dystopian California.
Didion, who died in 2021, was known for her dry wit and caustic observations about American culture and her home state of California. Her nonfiction books included the essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem and the memoir The Year of Magical Thinking; she was also known for her novels including Play It as It Lays and A Book of Common Prayer.
With her husband, John Gregory Dunne, she wrote the screenplays for films including The Panic in Needle Park and True Confessions. A documentary about her, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, was released in 2017; it was directed by one of her nephews, the actor Griffin Dunne.
“I read every published word Joan wrote, then put it all in a blender,” Wilder told Deadline. “We took all the history and the culture of the period, and what was going on in Joan’s head, and created something fast-moving, lyrical and strange. It moves fast, and it feels like the movie Didion might’ve made with [filmmaker Michelangelo] Antonioni in L.A. at the end of the ’60s.”
Wilder’s movie is as yet untitled.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
