Captain America star Chris Evans is reportedly in talks to star in a movie about Gene Kelly, the iconic musical movie star of Singin’ In The Rain. The news comes just weeks after another Marvel Studios star, Tom Holland, confirmed he was going to make a movie about Kelly’s contemporary, Fred Astaire, for Sony. The Kelly project is based on an idea Evans came up with himself, reports Deadline.
The untitled film will be a fictional story about a 12-year-old boy who works at the MGM lot in Hollywood in 1952. The boy creates an imagined friendship with Kelly, who is developing his next film. There is no studio attached to the project yet, but it does have producers. Mark Kassem will produce with Evans, while Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman’s T-Street Productions will also produce. Evans, Johnson, and Bergman previously worked together on Knives Out.
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John Logan will write the script. He has experience with projects related to Hollywood history, as he wrote the screenplays to Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator and RKO 281, a 1999 HBO movie about the making of Citizen Kane. Logan has Oscar nominations for Gladiator, The Aviator, and Hugo. He also worked on the James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre.
The Kelly project might not get the support of his estate. On Dec. 6, after Holland said he would make an Astaire biopic, Kelly’s widow, Patricia Ward, wrote on Facebook that he did not want a film about his life made. “I can’t verify how Astaire felt about the prospect of a biopic, but I can say-firmly-that it was one thing that Gene specifically asked NOT to be done,” Ward wrote on Facebook. “I’ve been vociferous in conveying Gene’s strong sentiments about this and will continue to be. I hope people will respect what he wanted.”
Kelly is considered one of the most innovative filmmakers of musicals in Hollywood history. He starred in and co-directed Singin’ in the Rain, On the Town, It’s Always Fair Weather and Brigadoon. In 1952, he received a special Oscar for his work on An American In Paris. His only competitive Oscar nomination came in 1946 for Anchors Aweigh. In 1982, he received a Kennedy Center Honor. Kelly died in 1996 at 83.
As for Evans, although he is done playing Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (for now), he does have a busy 2022. He voices Buzz Lightyear in Pixar’s Lightyear, which opens on June 17. He also stars in Joe and Anthony Russo’s all-star spy movie The Gray Man, which also stars Jessica Henwick, Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling, and Billy Bob Thornton.
