Matthew Wilder will write and direct an untitled film that chronicles the life and work of author Joan Didion. Deadline reported that the plan "is to paint a dreamlike day in the life of Didion and California in the late 1960s, when the brilliant young journalist is hurtled from encounters with jailed Manson girls to protesting Black Panthers, and from Nancy Reagan pausing in a photo op to Vietnam War POWs--climaxing with an epilogue in a near-future California where an AI Joan encounters a dystopia beyond her wildest anxiety dreams."
Produced under David Michaels's Enfant Terrible Cinema, the film will shoot in Los Angeles in the first or second quarter of 2024. Financing is being discussed with potential partners this week at the American Film Market event.
"I read every published word Joan wrote, then put it all in a blender," Wilder said. "We took all the history and the culture of the period, and what was going on in Joan's head, and created something fast-moving, lyrical and strange. It moves fast, and it feels like the movie Didion might've made with Antonioni in L.A. at the end of the '60s."
Producer David Michaels commented: "Of course, it's really about today. All of what Joan saw happening in 1968 birthed the world we live in now. So, every scene is a double: a beautiful distant past but absolutely today."
Producer Reza Sixo Safai added: "The key to Untitled is the role of Joan, and this is really going to be a defining, iconic role for a young actress. Whoever winds up playing Joan.... This is something like Lydia Tár, a role that is going to resonate for years."