So we probably won't be getting that Hillary Clinton biopic from James Ponsoldt, or at least it sure doesn't look like it. Nothing has been heard of that project in months, while Ponsoldt has been keeping very busy. At Sundance he debuted The End of the Tour, and this week saw the first trailer for that one hit. He's also lining up an adaptation of The Circle, a thriller set to star Tom Hanks and possibly Emma Watson. Now you can add one more major promising project to the list.
According to Deadline, Ponsoldt will write and direct West of Sunset, based on Stewart O'Nan's book about the great author F. Scott Fitzgerald's tragic final years. Here's the synopsis:
In 1937, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack.
Those last three years of Fitzgerald’s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeously and gracefully written novel. With flashbacks to key moments from Fitzgerald’s past, the story follows him as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with brassy gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, begins work on The Last Tycoon, and tries to maintain a semblance of family life with the absent Zelda and daughter, Scottie.
Fitzgerald’s orbit of literary fame and the Golden Age of Hollywood is brought vividly to life through the novel’s romantic cast of characters, from Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway to Humphrey Bogart. A sympathetic and deeply personal portrait of a flawed man who never gave up in the end, even as his every wish and hope seemed thwarted.
So lots of big flashy roles set in the glorious Jazz Age. And who knows? Maybe Ponsoldt will seek out Tom Hiddleston, who played Fitzgerald so well in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.
