GRACE KELLY Biopic About Tax Dodging in Monaco is in Development!

With My Week in Marilyn released next month and chronicling a significant time in the life of Hollywood's most famous blonde Marilyn Monroe, French film producer Pierre-Ange Le Pogam is wanting to get in on the Oscar-baiting act with another famous blonde that was also taken away from our screens too early, the legendary Grace Kelly. Le Pogam has beat out several other competitors to win Arash Amel's dramatic new script titled Grace of Monaco that focuses on six months of Kelly's life in 1962 when the then Princess of Monaco was instrumental in resolving a heated dispute between France and it's small principality which it was believed had become a tax haven for the rich. Hardly a film relateable to Joe Popcorn and in these tough economic times I'm not sure who is clamoring around to see a movie about rich people avoiding paying taxes but as Grace Kelly is so much loved, and films about privileged royalty usually do so well critically and commercially (just need to see The King's Speech winning Best Picture last year), audiences will flock in droves to this if adapted right. Several filmmakers are said to be circling the script that 'mirrors The King's Speech in scope and tone'. Kelly is of course one of the more endearing figures of that period in Hollywood and is probably no less famous now than she was then. Her roles in classic Hitchcock films Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and of course the French Riviera set To Catch A Thief and obviously her part in the iconic American Western High Noon have kept her face appearing in timeless classics that cinephiles discover or re-visit time and time again and she was a fashion/celebrity icon that few have ever equaled. I'm not sure this Grace Kelly biopic is the one I would have made surrounding her life but of course you can be certain the movie will touch on her over demanding and over protective husband (Rainier III, Prince of Monaco) who banned the screenings of her films and wanted her to dissociate his wife's previous life when the 26 year old American beauty quit Hollywood forever when she was at the top of her game. That's the movie to make and hopefully this biopic will focus on that. As for who could play Kelly, well you can probably rule out Michelle Williams now she has played Marilyn and let's be honest, she is too sexy to play Grace. Same goes for Scarlett Johansson who was close to winning that Monroe role but Australian Naomi Watts could be interesting, and ironically she was to play Monroe for director Andrew Dominik before he made Cogan's Trade instead. You can read The Hollywood Reporter's story about Grace of Monao HERE.