Jennifer Lawrence will soon play someone closer to her own age—at least, for part of the movie. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lawrence has been cast as the lead in Marita, a film about Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro’s former lover who was recruited by the CIA to assassinate him (and all before she turned 21). American Hustle scribe Eric Warren Singer will write the film for Sony Pictures, who scooped up the project from Singer. There’s no director currently attached, but Sony is probably knocking on David O. Russell’s door right now, asking him if he wants to get the gang back together.
Marita will focus on the German-born Lorenz’s relationship with Castro that began just weeks after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Lorenz, who’s long since returned to the U.S., says she lived with Castro for several months, during which time she got pregnant but was forced to terminate the pregnancy. She left the Cuban leader (and capital) in 1960, joined an anti-Communist group, and was recruited by Frank Fiorini Sturgis, an undercover CIA operative whom you might also remember for his role in the Watergate scandal. Lorenz was told to assassinate Castro by putting poison pills in his food, but was reportedly unable to do so because she still loved him. She left for Miami soon after, where she took up with deposed Venezuelan dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez for a while.
Despite her aversion to murder for hire, Lorenz later claimed she was also present during the planning of the John F. Kennedy assassination. She eventually settled into a life of domestic espionage, reportedly spying on Eastern Bloc U.N. diplomats who lived in the building she managed with her husband. Sony Pictures is reportedly anxious to move forward with the project, already eyeing a late 2017 release. Marita would make for Lawrence’s second film with Sony in as many years, having already wrapped the sci-fi romance Passengers with Chris Pratt.