Michael Pitt has left Boardwalk Empire behind and it seems he’s going back to the mix of indie, arthouse and edge of the mainstream movies he used to make before his sejourn to HBO. Now Deadline reports he’s signed up to appear in The First, about Hollywood legend Mary Pickford.
Pitt will play Owen Moore, Pickfords first husband, before they divorced and she married the much more famous Douglas Fairbanks. Ryan Simpkins has been cast to play a young Pickford, with Lily Rabe up to play her as an adult. The film covers Pickfords life from a womans point of view as she rose to powerhouse status in a male-dominated fledgling business.
She became one of the first true movie stars and along with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith, created United Artists to be their own stomping grounds where they could be bosses instead of employees. It’s also true that along with Fairbanks, she helped create the idea of stars living lives of excess slightly apart from normal people.
The plan is to start filming early next year.