Lady Gaga’s next film role: infamous Gucci wife
LOS ANGELES >> Lady Gaga has lined up her next feature film and will play the wife of a murdered heir to the Gucci fashion dynasty, Hollywood media reported on Friday.
Gaga, whose first lead movie role in “A Star Is Born” last year was critically acclaimed, will play Patrizia Reggiani, who served 18 years in an Italian prison for orchestrating the 1995 murder in Milan of her husband Maurizio Gucci, according to Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.
Reggiani, dubbed the “Black Widow” in what was one of the most scandalous high society crimes in Italian history, was released from prison in 2016.
Ridley Scott will direct and produce the movie, the publications said.
Representatives for Scott and Gaga, who was born in New York and has Italian heritage, did not respond to requests for comment.
The film will be the first for Gaga since she took her music career to the big screen in “A Star Is Born,” which brought her an Oscar for best original song for “Shallow”
and a best actress nomination.
No title or date for the film’s release was given.
According to Deadline, the Gucci murder tale is scripted by Roberto Bentivegna, based on the Sara Gay Forden book “The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed.”
Scott plans to move quickly to direct the film after he first helms “The Last Duel.”
He will produce the Gucci saga with Giannina Scott and Scott Free Productions.
According to USA Today, the wealthy socialite Reggiani was dubbed the “Black Widow” by the Italian media after she was tried and convicted of hiring a hit man to kill her philandering ex-husband.
Gucci was shot from behind on March 27, 1995, walking up the steps to his Milan office by a gunman who sped away in a green Renault Clio car.
As the New York Times noted during Reggiani’s trial, “The sordid tale of the Gucci family combines all the elements guaranteed to perk up a jaded public: sex, money, vengeance — and designer shoes.”