Wish “Darkest Hour” had more of Clementine Churchill? Winston Churchill’s wife is stepping into the limelight in a new biopic from Maven Pictures. Two-time Emmy nominee Margaret Nagle has been tapped to pen the script, Deadline confirms.
Based on a 1979 biography of Churchill written by her daughter, Mary Soames, the feature will dig into Clementine, or Clemmie’s, integral role in her husband’s political career. As the source notes, “Clementine was known for her aid work across both world wars, organizing canteens for munitions workers during WWI and serving as a chairman of the Red Cross Aid to Russia Fund during WWII as well as chairman of the Fulmer Chase Maternity Hospital for Wives of Junior Officers.” In 1946 she was named Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.
Churchill died in 1965.
Maven’s Trudie Styler and Celine Rattray are teaming up with producer Sayoko Teitelbaum on the project.
“We see this as a film showing audiences an extraordinary woman whose strength and resilience played a major role in the shaping of a nation,” Styler, Rattray and Teitelbaum said. “It is also a movie about a marriage, and a couple who loved each other, respected each other, fought alongside one another — a couple we can all relate and aspire to, even living in the public eye. We feel Nagle is the perfect writer, with her ability to turn history into drama, to adapt this complex story and to bring Clementine to life onscreen.”
The film is being made with the cooperation of the Soames estate.
Nagle received Emmy nods and WGA Awards for penning 2005 TV Movie “Warm Springs,” a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and for her work on HBO’s crime drama “Boardwalk Empire.” She created “Red Band Society,” a medical drama led by Octavia Spencer that ran on Fox from 2014-5, and penned the 2014 Reese Witherspoon-starrer “The Good Lie.”
“The film industry is less interested than ever in women writing, directing, or starring in films,” Nagle said in 2016. “Women actors have few parts and fewer lines in films than men. Women over 40 work less in all the guilds. I’m on the diversity committee at the WGA and it’s bad.”
Kristin Scott Thomas portrayed Clementine Churchill in 2017’s “Darkest Hour.”
