Sandra Bullock has been choosy with her post-Gravity projects, but the actress has finally selected a new starring vehicle: an untitled biopic of Tupperware marketing exec Brownie Wise.
Wise was the genius behind the Tupperware party, an idea that shot plastic-container sales through the roof. She became a celebrity saleswoman idealized as the perfect housewife, but back at Tupperware headquarters she ran the firm’s sales division. In 1954 she became the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week. Her popularity as a spokeswoman was no doubt partially fueled by her advocacy of married women getting to earn a bit of pocket money for themselves.
But Wise was no Peggy Olson; the acrimonious relationship between Wise and company president Earl Tupper led to her ousting in 1958 and her deletion from Tupperware’s written history. She never regained her earlier business success and died in obscurity in 1992.
Bullock’s everywoman persona feels distinctly modern, so it’ll be interesting to see how she fares in this rare venture into period territory.
Tate Taylor adapted the script from Bob Kealing’s nonfiction book Tupperware Unsealed, and will also direct. “Sandy and I have been trying to work together for years,” he commented. “I’m very excited to put Tupperware in her hands. This is a collaborative dream come true.”
Taylor helmed another midcentury-era women’s film in The Help and another biopic in Get on Up, the James Brown treatment opening August 1.
Interestingly, this is the second female-entrepreneur biopic currently in development. Jennifer Lawrence’s third collaboration with David O. Russell will be Joy, the biopic planned for Christmas 2015 about household-inventions magnate Joy Mangano, who holds over a hundred patents to her name and regularly appears on HSN.
[via THR]
