Hurricana, a biopic about Anna Nicole Smith, is in the works. The film will detail the final days of the model, actress, and reality TV star before her death from an accidental drug overdose at age 39. The Hollywood Reporter says that Sierra/Affinity is handling sales and will market the film at the European Film Market. Oscar-winner Holly Hunter (The Piano, Batman vs. Superman) is in talks to join the cast of the biopic, which will be directed by Killing Eve director Francesca Gregorini. Sierra/Affinity originally released a statement that Betty Gilpin of the Netflix comedy GLOW was in talks to play Smith, but later statements from Gilpin’s reps and the producers revealed this was no longer the case, and Gilpin would not appear in the film.
Credit: ABC via WTXL
According to Deadline, Hunter is in talks to play Khristine, Smith’s therapist who embarks on a 36-hour odyssey to save her patient’s life only to unknowingly deliver the fatal blow. Hurricana is being described as a demonstration of the “immense hurricane-like force that was Anna Nicole Smith, and the fateful string of events that led Anna to destroy everything in her path, including herself and those closest to her.”
Smith’s life was indeed complicated, controversial, and towards the end, filled with tragedy. Having become famous as a model for Playboy and other publications, she gained publicity in 1994 for marrying the 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall, which the media speculated was for money. There was a lengthy battle for Marshall’s estate when he died in 1995. She had a strained relationship with her birth family. Smith gave birth to daughter Dannielynn Birkhead on September 7, 2006, but her joy was short-lived when her 20-year-old son Daniel Wayne Smith died three days later from an accidental drug overdose while visiting Smith in the hospital room. Her grief, along with the stress over paternity and custody disputes over her newborn daughter, lasted for months before her own death on February 8, 2007.
Smith had some film roles, but her most famous on-screen role was probably documenting her own life on The Anna Nicole Smith Show.
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