Cate Blanchett is now attached to star in a Lucille Ball biopic that is being written by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball).

Of course with that kind of combination it is expected that the film is being geared towards a major awards campaign. The film will cover the 20-year marriage of Ball and Desi Arnaz, and presumably also their TV show I Love Lucy. It will be produced by their two children Lucy Arnaz Jr. and Desi Arnaz Jr.

More on this story below.

The Wrap was the first to report on the news. According to them Lucy and Desi will be working with the Sony-based Escape Artists. Jenna Block will oversee development.

Lucille Ball was married to Desi Arnaz between 1940 and 1960. She later divorced, only to marry Gary Morton a year later. That marriage lasted until the time of her death in 1989.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Blanchett has played a Hollywood icon in the past. She played Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, for which she won an Academy Award. She then won her second Academy Award in 2013 for her role in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. The actress was most recently seen in Disney’s big screen adaptation of Cinderella and Terrance Malick’s Knight of Cups. Her upcoming roles include Andy Serkis’ adaptation of The Jungle Book – not the Disney one – and Todd Haynes”˜ lesbian romance Carol.

Sorkin is a strong dramatic writer, for which we have seen him earn a variety of awards. He won an academy award for writing The Social Network, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Moneyball a year later. It should be interesting to see how he approaches the comedy aspect of the biopic, since he isn’t known for his humor. He also wrote the screenplay for Steve Jobs, the Steve Jobs biopic over at Universal starring Michael Fassbender. The film is scheduled for an October 9 release.

What is also interesting is the fact that Sorkin is writing a female biopic at all. When Sony’s computer system was hacked, and their e-mails leaked, one of them revealed that Sorkin thought that Hollywood roles for women are unequal to those for men, where he ridiculed Blanchett’s work for being nowhere near close to the difficulty of a performance that men puts out in their films.

[Source: The Wrap]