Not even a decade after Martin Scorsese's decade-spanning Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, Warren Beatty is planning his own take on the industrialist and Hollywood icon. With Beatty set to play Hughes, Deadline reports he's found his female lead in Felicity Jones, the British actress currently breaking out in the small-scale indie Like Crazy.
Though you might remember from The Aviator that Hughes had relationships with several Hollywood icons, including Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn, Jones will be playing none of them. With Beatty playing Hughes himself, obviously in his later years, Jones will be playing a young woman who starts a relationship with Hughes's driver-- actors currently being looked at to play that role include Justin Timberlake and Alden Ehrenreich. It's unclear exactly how a love story between two young people will have anything to do with Hughes, who in his later years succumbed to obsessive-compulsive disorder and a wide range of quirks, but that will definitely give the story a spin that separates it from Scorsese's version of Hughes's life.
Deadline also says that Annette Bening is "in the mix" for a role, which only makes sense given that she's Beatty's wife-- shouldn't she be guaranteed for a part? Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin and Owen Wilson also might come on board, though again, we're not sure which parts they'll play. As much as Felicity Jones is getting all the attention today-- ingenues have a way of making that happen-- the movie will likely be more about Beatty, who is acting for the first time since 2001's Town and Country and directing for the first time since 1998's Bulworth. Yeah, you get to do pretty much whatever you want with your retirement when you're a Hollywood icon, but it feels really good to know that Beatty will be making his way back to the screen at least one more time. The movie is expected to start production sometime next year.
