Hilary Swank, Mira Nair team up for Amelia Earhart biopic

The director who brought us Monsoon Wedding, The Namesake and Vanity Fair is making a biopic of Amelia Earhart, the first woman to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic who mysteriously disappeared in 1937. Amelia will star double Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby, Boys Don't Cry).

Swank has a history of playing strong women in film, and her cinematic choices of late have ranged from award-caliber films to horror and romantic comedies.

The script for the film was written by Oscar-winner Ron Bass (Entrapment, Snow Falling on Cedars, What Dreams May Come, Rain Man), who used several biographies of Earhart to shape the film, focusing on Earhart's early career. Variety reports that Bass completed the script shortly before the writers' strike began, and that the postponement of Shantaram freed Nair to direct. Amelia is being produced by Ted Waitt (Avalon Pictures), Kevin Hyman and Nair's production partner Lydia Dean Pilcher.

Filming begins in April.

Related links:
AmeliaEarhart.com
IMDB.com - Hilary Swank
Paste: Biopics Are The New Black

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