The sun will rise on a new look at the life of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway.
The Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea writer’s great-granddaughter Dree Hemingway will serve as executive producer on The Hemingway Files, a movie based on her famous family member’s last years (via Deadline). Jessica M. Thompson (The Invitation) is set to direct from a script by Cory Todd Hughes and Adrian Speckert (Armor). Casting is currently underway.
The story will focus on Hemingway and his closest friends, A.E. Hotchner and Duke MacMullen, as they “help him navigate his deepening mental struggles, his strained relationship with his trans daughter Gloria Hemingway, and the growing paranoia surrounding his belief that the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover, was watching him.”
The writer’s great-granddaughter promises a fresh look at his iconic life, saying in a statement:
My great grandfather’s story has been told many times but rarely with this level of empathy and honesty. The Hemingway Files is about understanding him not as an icon, but as a father, a friend, and a man trying to hold on to himself.
Director Thompson echoed those sentiments, saying:
I want to peer underneath the mask of Hemingway’s legend and lay bare the truth of this multifaceted artist. I’m fascinated by the intersection of myth and reality. Hemingway’s story isn’t just about a writer grappling with obsolescence, it’s about the cost of masculinity, the fragility of family, and the truth that even the strongest among us can struggle.
Writers Hughes and Speckert also emphasized the story’s focus on separating the man from the myth:
This is one of the most important scripts of our lives. Dree Hemingway’s support and trust in this project mean the world to us. We feel a deep responsibility to tell the truth of what Hemingway endured in those last years, his battles with his mind, his government, and his heart. The world deserves to know who he really was beneath the myth.
The Nobel Prize-winning Hemingway not only made a massive contribution to the world of literature, he also made his mark on Hollywood, mostly through adaptations of his works.
Famous Hemingway books like A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea served as the basis for prestige productions, starring iconic actors like Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, and Spencer Tracy.
Less-famous Hemingway stories provided inspiration for classic movies like To Have and Have Not, the Humphrey Bogart drama directed by Howard Hawks, and the gritty film noir The Killers, starring Burt Lancaster in his screen debut, alongside Ava Gardner.
Hemingway has also appeared as a character on-screen numerous times in recent years. 2012’s Hemingway & Gellhorn starred Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman as the titular literary couple. 2015’s Papa: Hemingway in Cuba starred Adrian Sparks as the famed author during his time living in Havana.
The 2016 film Genius cast Dominic West as Hemingway in a film centered on the famed editor Maxwell Perkins (Colin Firth). In a more whimsical vein, Woody Allen’s Oscar-winning Midnight in Paris cast Corey Stoll as a young version of Hemingway, who interacts with the film’s time-hopping protagonist Gil (Owen Wilson).
Hemingway passed away in 1961 after years of declining mental and physical health.
The daughter of actor Mariel Hemingway, Dree Hemingway has starred in several well-regarded independent features, including Sean Baker’s Starlet, Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip, and Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young.
The Hemingway Files does not yet have a release date.