If ever there were a feature vehicle for Lady Gaga, it’s Ridley Scott’s upcoming Gucci for MGM. Which, according to Deadline, just added about a thousand A-list actors to its cast.
Likely being added to the cast are Adam Driver, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Jack Huston and Reeve Carney, who are all reportedly in talks to join the project. If they all sign, that is one hell of a cast. Adding Lady Gaga to the mix, that’s 23 Oscar nominations, 5 Oscar wins, 9 Emmy nominations, 2 Emmy wins, 31 Golden Globe nominations, 8 Golden Globe wins, 15 Grammy nominations and 6 Grammy wins between them. You can see the Oscar hope vultures already circling around this project.
It’s unclear yet what roles the actors are each circling. For her part, Lady Gaga will star as Patrizia Reggiani, the murderous ex-wife of Maurizio Gucci, the one-time head of the Gucci fashion house. Reggiani’s story is a dark and tragic one: After 12 years of marriage and two daughters, he left her in 1985 for a younger woman, leaving for a business trip and never returning. Her life got harder in 1992 when she suffered from a brain tumor, which she had removed. Three years later, she hired a hitman to assassinate her ex-husband, who was gunned down as he was leaving his office. The Italian media sensationalized her 1998 trial, painting her as a vengeful, scorned woman and dubbing her “Black Widow.” She was eventually sentenced to 29 years, but her daughters fought her conviction, arguing that the brain tumor had drastically changed her personality. In 2000, they successfully got a few years knocked off their mother’s sentence but the stress had grown too great by then and the struggling Reggiani tried to kill herself that same year. Luckily, she was rescued. Reggiani was finally released early from prison in 2016 after serving 18 years.
It’s a role tailor-made for Lady Gaga: It’s Italian. It’s fashion. It’s melodramatic. It’s tragic. It’s glamorous. It’s scandalous. After her turn on American Crime Story and in A Star is Born, it’s a role she seems destined to play.
MGM landed the rights to the project in April with plans to begin production after Scott finishes shooting The Last Duel, which will resume production next week after breaking for the pandemic. Giannina Facio, Ridley Scott’s actress-producer wife, has long wanted to bring a story about the Gucci family dynasty and drama to life. She and Scott are partners in life and in business, having collaborated on projects in the past; it was Facio who brought the Gucci project to Ridley Scott and got him on board. The script, written by Roberto Bentivegna, is based on Sara Gay Forden’s book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed. Scott and Facio will produce alongside Kevin Walsh.
No word on when this might go into production, but it appears that MGM wants to get it started as soon as Scott is finished wrapping The Last Duel so it’s entirely possible it will be in production by the end of this year or early next.
