Gal Gadot may play a real-life Wonder Woman. The box office heroine is reportedly near a deal to topline and executive produce a Showtime series about Hedy Lamarr. Best known for acting in titles such as “Samson and Delilah,” “Boom Town,” and “Come Live With Me,” Austria-born Lamarr was also an accomplished inventor: she invented technology to help Allied warships torpedo Nazi submarines in WWII, and that communication system was later used as the basis for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
“The series has not been formally picked up at the premium cabler,” Variety writes, “but it would be a limited series should the deals become finalized.”
“The Affair” co-creator and showrunner Sarah Treem will write the project and join Gadot as an exec producer.
Alexandra Dean’s documentary “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story” debuted at the Tribeca Film Fest in 2017 and was released later that year. “Who wouldn’t want to make a story about Hedy?!” Dean asked in an interview with us. “She was a wild child. Some said she was a spy. She was a movie star and later a drug addict and a recluse. Her life was crazy enough before we discovered she came up with a technology we use in our digital devices every day.” She continued, “I spent years profiling inventors and innovators for Bloomberg Television and Businessweek, but I never heard a life story that came close to Hedy’s.”
Lamarr died in 2000 from cardiac issues. She was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
“In the Fade” actress Diane Kruger has been trying to get a project about Lamarr off the ground for years. “I produce myself, or I’ve been trying to produce this new series about Hedy Lamarr,” she explained at Cannes in May. “I’ve had this project for four years and it’s been like trying to push a rock up a mountain.” She elaborated, “Nobody wanted [the project]. Every studio said, ‘We don’t want to make a female biopic. Who wants to see that?’ and it’s finally gained momentum in the last six months, so I do feel like it’s changing a little bit. Since ‘Hidden Figures’ came out, that’s when things started to change. It’s just there’s more of an appetite and now there is proof that those types of films make money.”
“Hidden Figures” grossed over $235 million worldwide on a budget of $25 million. The Oscar-nominated pic was based on a true story and showed how three African American women working at NASA played a hugely influential role in the space race.
No word on the status of Kruger’s project.
Gadot will reprise her role as Diana Prince in Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman 1984,” set to bow November 1, 2019. The first “Wonder Woman” grossed over $821 million worldwide. Gadot’s other credits include the “Fast & Furious” franchise and “Keeping Up with the Joneses.”
