Ana de Armas’s Marilyn Monroe Biopic Just Got A Shocking Rating From Netflix
Whoa, was Ana de Armas expecting that rating?
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The new biopic of Marilyn Monroe from star Ana de Armas and director Andrew Dominik has apparently received an unusual rating. It has been rumored that the upcoming film Blonde has received an NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, which assigns those ratings of R, G, or if you’re Steven Spielberg, they will make one up for you. NC-17 is defined by the MPAA as “Adults Only No One 17 and Under Admitted. Clearly adult. Children are not admitted.” It is one of the most dreaded ratings by Hollywood studios, having a stigma of unsavory content not shared by R. For his part, director Andrew Dominik is fine with it, explaining to Screen Daily that it is actually what he would want to see in a Marilyn Monroe movie.
Ana de Armas is just the latest actress to portray legendary starlet Marilyn Monroe in film. Since Monroe tragically died in 1962 at the age of 36, she has become an iconic part of American culture. Prior to her death, she had come from a troubled background, endured mistreatment by the Hollywood studio system and starred in still highly regarded films like The Seven Year Itch and Some Like It Hot. In her own lifetime, she was regarded as a symbol of cinematic sexuality, and was generally pushed into roles as flighty, vapid women. She disliked this, and had begun to take on more dramatic roles at the time of her death, which was attributed to an accidental drug overdose. Almost immediately, a cottage industry of films about Monroe sprung up, and now there are enough Marilyn biopics to merit their own rankings.
Blonde is based on a 2000 bestselling historical novel by Joyce Carol Oates. It features many dark elements of Marilyn Monroe’s life, including drug addiction and sexual assault, so it is not surprising that the MPAA gave it an NC-17. However, the film is being produced by streaming giant Netflix, which is reportedly not happy with the rating or the cut of the film. Aside from the issue of theatrical release and the problems that an NC-17 ratings prompts, Dominik apparently has also had conflicts with Netflix over the film premiering at the Cannes film festival. There have also been rumors of production problems, with Cuban-born Ana de Armas apparently having issues mastering Monroe’s accent. Dominik has highly praised his star, and de Armas herself has said she spent nine months perfecting the accent. Most recently, de Armas was the subject of a bizarre lawsuit and is set to star with Chris Evans and Ryan Gosling in the upcoming The Gray Man.
Whether Netflix will demand a different cut of Blonde and whether Dominik will acquiesce to it remains to be seen. Netflix already brought in the editor of Christopher Nolan’s film Tenet, Jennifer Lame, to work on the film and apparently temper some of Dominik’s grimmer work. The director is best known for the elegaic western film The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Killing Them Softly, both darkly violent films starring Brad Pitt (who is also producing Blonde). Blonde, with Ana de Armas as our latest Marilyn, is set to be released sometime this year.
