Patty Hearst biopic cancelled after heiress' criticism

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Press Trust of India Los Angeles
Last Updated : Jan 12 2018 | 2:05 PM IST
Twentieth Century Fox has cancelled the biopic of heiress Patty Hearst.
"Logan" director James Mangold was attached to direct the project with Elle Fanning as the lead.
"Twentieth Century Fox Film and its production partners have decided to cancel the studio's planned project based on the book 'American Heiress'," Fox said in a statement issued to The Hollywood Reporter.
The development came after Hearst criticised author Jeffrey Toobins on whose best-selling book "American Heiress", the film was based on. Toobins is also the producer of a CNN docu-series based on Hearst life.
The book detailed the capture of the heiress and her two-year detainment by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the mid-1970s, as well as her transition from hostage to warrior. She ended up sympathising with her captors and even went on bank robberies with them before she was arrested in 1975.
In a statement, Hearst said Toobins' book "romanticises my rape and torture and calls my abduction a 'rollicking adventure'".
She also attacked CNN and Fox, and said that Oprah Winfrey's speech at the Golden Globes inspired her to take a stand for herself.
"I am further saddened and appalled that Fox 2000 agreed to finance and produce a movie based on Toobin's book (with a similarly themed screenplay, also written by men) and that CNN has agreed to continue to perpetuate a one-sided dialogue romanticising my torture and rape by hosting a podcast and docuseries through Toobin's distorted lens.
"I refuse to give Jeffrey Toobin, 21st Century Fox, CNN or anyone else involved in these projects about my life the power to make me a victim again, or the power to provide a platform where victim blaming is OK," Hearst said in the statement.

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First Published: Jan 12 2018 | 2:05 PM IST

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