After a few months spent outside the protection of an airtight container, where it was exposed to the probing questions of whatever studio happened to come sniffing around, Sony has snapped up director Tate Taylor’s Tupperware movie and set it aside to be released at an appropriate time, possibly during a Christmas season in the near future. As previously reported, the as-yet-untitled movie will trace the rise and fall of Brownie Wise, an executive who came up with the idea for Tupperware parties, the gatherings that turned the product into an iconic success. Wise quickly gained notoriety—she was the first woman to appear on the cover of Businessweek—but she was fired by Tupperware creator Earl Tupper in 1958 for reasons of not being male.
Sandra Bullock is attached to star as Wise, marking the actresses’ return to earthbound film roles after her own frolic in the airless vacuum of outer space. Some credit Tupperware parties with allowing suburban women in the ’50s—women who might otherwise have had few opportunities to get involved in a major corporation’s sales force—to earn money while expanding their social circles, thus setting the stage for the women’s liberation movement in the ’60s. To be fair, we haven’t seen the script, so the movie might ignore the whole proto-feminist angle and just feature two hours of Sandra Bullock sitting alone in a boardroom, mulling over sales figures while eating a sensible lunch effectively preserved in a Tupperware container.
[via The Hollywood Reporter, PBS, BBC]