Leonardo da Vinci is coming soon to a movie theater near you. The Renaissance artist will become the latest artist to receive a biopic, Variety reports, in the form of a new film from Andrew Haigh, the director most famous for making last year’s All of Us Strangers.
The film will be based on Walter Isaacson’s acclaimed Leonardo biography, though it remains unclear whether it will touch on just one aspect of the artist’s life or the whole thing. It seems likely, however, that Haigh’s movie will be no small endeavor. It’s being made by Universal, one of the biggest Hollywood studios.
Isaacson’s book, which released in 2017, runs to more than 600 pages, and traces the full arc of Leonardo’s career, including his making of the Mona Lisa and his scientific experiments. Among other things, the biography shed light on Leonardo’s sexuality, positing him as a gay person who took two younger men as his lovers. (The matter has remained one of some academic debate among art historians, though most agree at this point that Leonardo was gay.)
And based on Haigh’s prior output, the film could very well place an emphasis on Leonardo’s queerness. His past works include the HBO TV series Looking, about a set of gay men in San Francisco, and 2011’s Weekend, a drama about two gay men who have a brief but intense encounter.
According to Variety, moneyed Hollywood studios have been trying to get an adaptation of Isaacson’s biography since around the time it hit bookstands across the world. Paramount had at one point been reportedly planning its own movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, but Universal took on the project last year. Haigh will serve as both director and writer on this film.
