A film observing the early life of famous physicist Stephen Hawking is working its way through pre-production, and Like Crazy star Felicity Jones has just signed on to take the female lead. Jones will be playing Hawking’s first wife, Jane, whom he met at Cambridge. Eddie Redmayne, best known for his role as Marius in the most recent screen adaptation of Les Miserables, is on board to play Hawking.
Hawking’s life has been adapted for the screen before: once with Errol Morris’s documentary A Brief History of Time in 1991, and again, in 2004 with the made-for-TV movie “Hawking” starring Benedict Cumberbatch. This new biopic will be directed by James Marsh, director of the brilliant 2008 documentary Man on Wire, and the script was adapted by Anthony McCarten (Death of a Superhero). The story follows the young couple as they meet and decide to marry despite the fact that Stephen has been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, otherwise known as Lou Gerhig’s disease, a debilitating disease that affects voluntary muscle movement.
The two were married for over 20 years before Hawking eventually left Jane for his nurse, Elaine Mason, in 1995. Following his divorce with Mason in 2006, however, he and Jane reconnected and once again became good friends.
The film aims to release in 2015.
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