It’s hard to imagine that anyone hasn’t seen the Hollywood epic “Cleopatra” that starred Elizabeth Taylor that came out in 1963. It’s a film that grandfather’s show to their grandchildren. An amazing production that almost bankrupted 20th Century Fox. Since then there have been multiple attempts at remaking the film with different names attached. Patty Jenkins was supposed to be developing one for her “Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot a few years back. Denis Villeneuve (“Dune“) said that he’s wanted to make his own version of the film. And his might still be in the works. Earlier this year it was announced that Villeneuve had “1917” writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns working on the script. But the one we’re going to talk about today was the one that would have starred Angelina Jolie, with Brian Helgeland writing.
“I was the very first writer on ‘Cleopatra’ when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which was almost made,” Helgeland said. “It had elements of a political thriller with assassinations and sex, but it’s an epic that’s divided between her love affairs with Caesar and Marc Antony. Lots of true events surprised me when I was writing it.”
“For example, the day Caesar was assassinated — the Ides of March and all that stuff — she was in Rome. They were leaving for Egypt, and the reason why they had to kill him at that time was because he was headed out of town with her. That’s historically true and featured in the script. She writes Marc Antony’s speech — ‘friends, Romans, countrymen’ — because he doesn’t know what to say, but she tells him what to say. It’s sort of her way of saying ‘fuck you’ to those guys because she’s smart enough and he’s not.”
Earlier back in May of 2011 Jolie spoke on the character to The Telegraph, saying that she wanted to play her character as accurately as possible. Which would in itself be a testament to Cleopatra because we’ve never really had a film that told the real story of her. She cites that her being a sex symbol was probably not the case in reality, as Taylor’s portrayal insinuated.
“She has been very misunderstood. I thought it was all about the glamour, but then I read about her and she was a very strong mother, she spoke five languages and she was a leader,” Jolie said. “My performance will never be as lovely as Elizabeth’s. We are trying to get into a different truth about her as a pharaoh in history and not as a sex symbol, because she really wasn’t … Even this idea of her having many lovers – it was possible that it was only two. She is very interesting, but she wasn’t a great beauty.”
In a way, it’s good that this film never got made. First of all, Jolie’s a White girl through and through with her father being of German and Slovakian descent. Her mother was primarily French Canadian, Dutch, and like her father, German. Not exactly the type of diversity that we’re looking for when filming a biopic about a Greek woman, who many depict as Egyptian. Obviously Taylor was White as well, but consider the era that film was made. It was A LOT different back then.
