Kristen Stewart is not done with playing iconic women in history, it would seem. Apparently, it wasn't enough to portray Princess Diana in Spencer (and get an Oscar nomination along the way). Stick at what works right? Stewart's next role will be portraying the legendary 20th century writer, philosopher and activist in the Susan Sontag biopic. The film will be called Sontag, which will be directed by documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson.
The iconic New York feminist icon passed away in 2004 and left a seismic legacy behind her. Not only an inspiration to writers of her era, she had also been in a relationship with the legendary photographer Annie Lebowitz for 15 years.
Sontag's work was celebrated and criticised. She may have popped into your head in 2019 as her 1964 essay Notes on Camp experienced a pop culture revival. To jog your memory, 'camp' was the Met Gala's theme that year. Ask any student of the arts and they will have read her critical 1977 work On Photography. If they didn't study them they will at least have heard of her fictional works The Benefactor (1963), Death Kit (1967) and In America (2000) too.
What do we know about the Susan Sontag biopic so far?
We know that Sontag will be based on Ben Moser's 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life and will cover four chapters of the literary icon's explosive life. We smell a sequel coming from a mile off.
The project is set to start filming at the Berlin Film Festival “We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” producer Gabrielle Tana said. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling, and this is reflective of that, so she will use documentary in it.”
This is not the only major thing Stewart is involved in this year. In addition to Spencer, she has recently performed in another high-profile biopic 2019's Seberg about Jean Seberg's relationship with the Black Panther Party. On a camper note, she is also on board to direct three boygenius music videos. Lucky us, huh?
