Angelina Jolie’s Axed ‘Cleopatra’ Was a Love Affair Epic That Had ‘Elements of a Political Thriller With Assassinations and Sex’: It ‘Was Almost Made’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Angelina Jolie‘s scrapped “Cleopatra” movie was part romance epic and part “political thriller with assassinations and sex,” according to the movie’s original screenwriter Brian Helgeland.
The Oscar-winning actor was set to play the Egyptian queen in a tentpole for Sony Pictures that once courted director David Fincher to helm.
It never got off the ground. “I was the very first writer on ‘Cleopatra’ when it was being developed for Angelina Jolie to star in, which was almost made,” Helgeland said in an interview with Inverse. “It had elements of a political thriller with assassinations and sex, but it’s an epic that’s divided between her love affairs with Caesar and Marc Antony.
Lots of true events surprised me when I was writing it.” “For example, the day Caesar was assassinated — the Ides of March and all that stuff — she was in Rome,” he continued. “They were leaving for Egypt, and the reason why they had to kill him at that time was because he was headed out of town with her.
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