Scarlett Johansson and Jennifer Lawrence to Play Zelda Fitzgerald in Competing Films

There’s about to be a Legend of Two Zeldas.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, East Ender Scarlett Johansson and Hamptons fan Jennifer Lawrence will both appear as the Zelda Fitzgerald, the talented and troubled wife of legendary author F. Scott Fitzgerald, in upcoming biographical films. We reported on Johansson’s involvement in a Zelda Fitzgerald project earlier this year, but Lawrence’s film has just been announced.

Johansson will play the Jazz Age legend in The Beautiful and the Damned. Producer Millennium Films has made a deal with the Fitzgerald estate and will use never-before-seen transcripts from her time in a sanatorium. Word has it that the transcripts suggest that F. Scott Fitzgerald took his wife’s ideas and used them as his own. Millennium Films president Mark Gill told The Hollywood Reporter, “She was massively ahead of her time, and she took a beating for it. He stole her ideas and put them in his books. The marriage was a co-dependency from hell with a Jazz Age soundtrack.”

Lawrence’s film, titled Zelda, is being developed by Ron Howard, who may also direct. The screenplay, written by Emma Frost, is loosely based on Nancy Milford’s biography of the same name. Zelda is still seeking financing.

The two projects are likely to be fast-tracked if Amazon’s series Z: The Beginning of Everything, starring Christina Ricci as the socialite, is a success.