Jennifer Lawrence to Play Fidel Castro's Lover in Biopic

Jennifer Lawrence and Eric Warren Singer

The Golden Globe winner is set to play Marita Lorenz in ‘Dear Fidel,’ a pitch by 'American Hustle’ scribe Eric Warren Singer.

By Borys Kit, Rebecca Ford

After starring in a film inspired by the life of Miracle Mop creator Joy Mangano, Jennifer Lawrence is ready to tackle another real-life woman.

Lawrence, who received her fourth Oscar nomination on Thursday, is attached to portray Marita Lorenz in Dear Fidel, a hot pitch from Eric Warren Singer, who co-wrote American Hustle.

Sony Pictures, moving aggressively, just picked up the project from the Oscar-nominated scribe in a competitive situation. Matt Tolmach will produce the romantic spy drama with Lawrence and Scott Mednick.

Dear Fidel centers on Lorenz and how in 1959 she met and began an affair with Cuban leader Fidel Castro when she was 19 years old. After becoming pregnant and having an abortion, Lorenz left Cuba and joined anti-communists in the US, getting recruited by the CIA for an assassination mission. In 1960, she returned to Cuba to carry out the mission but, according to lore, yielded to love.

(Lorenz had quite the life, by the way. She had an affair with a Venezuelan dictator, claimed to have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and spied on diplomats for the FBI in the 1970s. The woman wrote two autobiographies and lives in Maryland.)

Singer spent months developing the project, working with Mednick, before bringing it to Lawrence, with whom he worked on Hustle, and taking it out to the town.

Sources say the true-life spy story attracted plenty of interest and bidding from studios such as Fox 2000, Warner Bros, Paramount and Annapurna.

Exec Ange Giannetti will oversee for the studio.

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Cuba has been heating up as a story setting and a possible shooting location since the embargoes were eased by President Obama. As THR previously reported, Fast & Furious 8 is hoping to shoot on the island nation. Additionally, Conan and House of Lies have both shot there recently.

Lawrence, repped by CAA, won a Golden Globe for her role as the housewife-turned-inventor in David O. Russell’s Joy, along with receiving an Oscar nomination for the role last week. The Hunger Games actress, who will next be seen in X-Men: Apocalypse, is attached to a slew of other projects. She’ll star in Darren Aronofsky’s untitled project for Paramount with Javier Bardem, she’s also planning to write and star in a project with her new BFF Amy Schumer and she’s attached to Steven Spielberg’s film It’s What I Do about a female war photographer.

With the Fidel pick-up, Sony is back in business with Lawrence for whom she recently completed the sci-fi love drama, Passengers.

Along with writing American Hustle and Red Sparrow, Singer previously wrote the script for 2009’s The International.

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