Sandra Bullock will portray a contemporary feminist icon in her next project. The Oscar winner will play former Texas state senator Wendy Davis in the spec “Let Her Speak,” Variety confirms. Davis made national headlines in 2013 when she filibustered for 11 hours in order to delay an extremely restrictive anti-abortion bill in her home state.
Mario Correa wrote the spec script and Escape Artists’ Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal have signed on to produce. “The package will now be shopped to studios and should court several suitors over the next week,” the source reveals.
No director is attached to “Let Her Speak” yet but, considering the feminist forces that are Bullock and Davis, we’re pulling for a woman to helm the film.
Since the abortion bill filibuster Davis has become a well-known voice in politics and women’s issues. Just yesterday Cosmo published an op-ed she wrote detailing the ways women are specifically vulnerable to gun violence. Davis decided not to seek re-election to Texas’ state senate in 2014 and instead ran for the state’s governorship. She lost her bid to Greg Abbott, the exiting Texas Attorney General.
A transcript of Davis’ 2013 filibuster was published as “Let Her Speak” that same year.
Bullock won an Academy Award in 2010 for biopic “The Blind Side” and received a nomination for “Gravity” in 2014. You can catch her next in the all-female “Ocean’s Eleven” spinoff, “Ocean’s Eight.” The just-wrapped film hits theaters June 8 and also stars Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Helena Bonham Carter, and Awkwafina. Bullock’s also signed on to star in “Birdbox,” a post-apocalyptic Netflix thriller from Oscar winner Susanne Bier (“In a Better World”).
