Michael Douglas stars in Soderbergh's LIBERACE biopic

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Matt here€ Michael Douglas is to team with his Traffic director Stephen Soderbergh for a Liberace biopic over at Warner Bros according to Variety. Douglas will play the flamboyant entertainer who at one time was the highest grossing performer in the U.S. He is remembered for his electric energy as a pianist, his eccentricities and his unrelenting popularity with a mass legion of fans. Soderbergh's "go to guy" Matt Damon is in talks to play Scott Thorson, the man who sued Liberace for $113 million in 1982 claiming palimony because he was the entertainer's partner for five years. This is despite Liberace fighting against claims his whole career that he was gay, all the way to his death in 1987. Presumably as Douglas is no spring chicken, the movie will follow the later years of Liberace and particularly his relationship with Thorson. Although there is definitely an appearance resemblance, I don't believe anyone has ever once watched Michael Douglas on screen and shouted... LIBERACE! But hey, Douglas at one time was the man... and I've enjoyed his recent small sized comebacks in The Sentinel and The King of California. It's nice to have him acting again and here, taking risks.

Richard LaGravenese, who wrote and directed P.S. I Love You and Freedom Writers - has scribed the biopic though it might be some time before we can see it. Although Soderbergh has just sold his two film epic on the life of Che Guerra to IFC Films and has just completed his C.I.A. thriller The Informant, he will then movie onto the call girl movie The Girlfriend Experience. Then, and only then, will he be free for this movie. And I tell ya, the movie industry is a whole lot more interesting for having hungry artists like Soderbergh. Discuss: Can you see Michael Douglas as Liberace? After Heath Ledger's Oscar nom for Brokeback Mountain, is it becoming the "in" thing to play gay characters on screen (Sean Penn/Emile Hirsch in Milk).