It will be the film plot that has everything: love, fashion, an ill-starred marriage, wealth, power, betrayal, family infighting and murder, all set against the glamorous Florentine background of the Gucci fashion house in its late 1970s and 1980s heyday.
And, if British director Ridley Scott gets his way, it will have Angelina Jolie as a real-life femme fatale and Leonardo DiCaprio playing opposite her. Jolie is said to be in talks about taking on the role of Patrizia Reggiani Gucci and it is known that DiCaprio has been approached to play Maurizio Gucci.
Maurizio was the grandson of company founder Guccio Gucci, [1869 – 1953]. He took over the company after a battle for control in the early 1980s and, although he was passionate about the business, he could not manage it effectively and in 1993 was forced to sell his shares. In 1972 Maurizio had married Patrizia Reggiani, a girl his family deemed socially inferior to them. At first the marriage was happy: Maurizio doted on the two sons Patrizia bore him and she enjoyed her wealthy lifestyle. However, as time went by and the company’s fortunes foundered, Maurizio lost interest in his wife and she became very critical of him. One day in 1985 Maurizio left Patrizia for good, sending a doctor friend to tell her the news.
Although Patrizia received an enormous divorce settlement, she continued to fight with her husband and was devastated when he decided to marry again. She became very bitter and would talk in public of her wish to have her husband killed. In 1995, Maurizio Gucci was shot dead outside his Milan apartment by a contract killer. Patrizia, by then known as the “black widow” by the Italian media, was convicted of plotting Maurizio’s murder and sentenced to 29 years’ imprisonment in 1998.
It did not help that she had said,
“I’d rather weep in a Rolls Royce than be happy on a bicycle.”
She claimed that her psychic, who had first made contact with the murderers, had blackmailed her into going along with the plot. Patrizia remains in prison, apparently in ill health and even more embittered.
The Gucci family, unsurprisingly, are not happy about the planned film and say they will take legal action to have it stopped. Meanwhile, Ridley Scott is looking for a scriptwriter. Any takers?
