As Wonder Woman readies her big-screen debut next year, companion piece of sorts is in the works in the form a bio centering around the creators of the famed feminist DC Comics superhero. Professor Marston & The Wonder Women officially started production last week, chronicling the fascinating lives that birthed Diana Prince. Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S.) wrote and directs the biographical film that has Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall and Bella Heathcote attached as stars. Today comes word, courtesy of Deadline, that Sony Pictures Worldwide has acquired global distribution rights to the title.
Dr. William Moulton Marston (Evans) created the Amazonian princess in 1941. He was a Harvard psychologist and inventor who led an unconventional life which may have helped broaden the scope of the superhero he helped create, the most dominant female force in comics. His wife Elizabeth (Hall), herself an accomplished psychologist and inventor proved a heavy influence as was Olive Byrne (Heathcote), a former student who the couple had maintained a polyamorous relationship with. The film looks to explore this relationship – constrained by the time they lived – as well as the controversial earlier criticism of Wonder Woman as a character as objectors of the time felt the superhero could lead young women to turn to lesbianism.
The progressive nature of this relationship continued following Marston’s death to skin cancer in 1947, after which Elizabeth and Oliver stayed together and raised Marston’s children. Professor Marston & The Wonder Women is being put together by Boxspring Entertainment and Topple Productions; Topple’s co-founder is Emmy-winning writer-director Jill Soloway of Transparent fame.
As for the cast, Evans can currently be seen in The Girl on the Train and will next appear as Gaston in Disney’s upcoming live-action reboot of the beloved animated hit Beauty and the Beast. Hall, who was last seen in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, will soon hit screens in Christine, bio which earned her acclaim at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Heathcote appeared in this past summer’s indie The Neon Demon and will appear in Fifty Shades Darker.
No release plans have yet been disclosed.
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