The Race To Make The Linda Lovelace Biopic

Hollywood is so enthralled by the story of Deep Throat actress Linda Lovelace that not one, but two biopics are in the works, with both projects optimistically aiming to begin shooting this summer and get to the box office first. One small problem: Neither film has secured financing.

Matthew Wilder’s Inferno has been troubled for as long as it’s been publicized. After a lot of fanfare surrounded the hiring and then firing of Lindsay Lohan from the project last year, the film seemed doomed until it was announced that Malin Akerman (of Watchmen fame) had signed on to play Lovelace. With this new set of legs, Wilder says he hopes to begin filming by June 1 despite the fact that as of last week he’d yet to finish casting or secure financing. However, he emailed The L.A. Times saying that he and “the film’s producers are making a deal with Louisiana-based investors that they hope to have closed soon.”

And while Lindsay Lohan presents the problem of being impossible to insure, she brought a special quality of flash and trash to the project that Wilder definitely realized was important to the film’s tone and success, which is probably why he prematurely released all those seedy promo photos of Lohan as Lovelace. It’s yet to be seen if Akerman can lend that kind of panache to Inferno, especially since she’s been going around saying some stupid, incredibly imperceptive shit about women and porn. (“I think girls would rather watch a beautiful love story and see the couple make love at the end.”)

Directors Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein—the team behind Howl—are working on their own “nontraditional” biopic based on the Deep Throat star’s life called Lovelace with Kate Hudson unofficially attached for the lead role. However, Lovelace, like Inferno, has its own set of speed bumps, despite Friedman and Epstein’s hope that the project will come together for what will also be a summer shoot. First of all, Kate Hudson, if she’s really slated for the title role, is very pregnant and reportedly due in July. Secondly, they, too, are having financing issues, with Friedman saying, “I’m pretty optimistic about [the fate of the project] today, but that does change by the day.”

A Linda Lovelace movie (or two) fights on [L.A. Times]
The Race to Release the First Linda Lovelace Biopic [AVN]