10 Upcoming Movies That Aren't What You Think
3. It's A "Sexually Graphic" Biopic - Blonde
Netflix's upcoming drama Blonde will star Ana de Armas as legendary actress Marilyn Monroe, and the general expectation has been that the streaming platform is hoping for major awards success from the film.
However, recent reports indicate that writer-director Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) has delivered something very different.
So different, in fact, that if the scuttlebutt is correct, Netflix themselves were blindsided by the "sexually graphic NC-17 depiction" of Monroe, which includes a rape scene and another featuring "bloody menstrual cunnilingus."
The report says that Netflix, like audiences, were expecting an awards-caliber film but ended up with a "vague, obtuse arthouse film," causing them to go to war with Dominik over the final cut, in turn pushing its release to 2022.
This lines up with comments from Joyce Carol Oates, the author of the novel on which the film is based, who was screened an early cut of the film and called it "startling, brilliant, very disturbing."
Dominik has always been a fiercely singular filmmaker, but even so, he seemingly surprised Netflix with just how out-there his Marilyn Monroe biopic truly is.
Fingers crossed they don't end up curtailing his vision into something more benign and inoffensive.