Australian actress Cate Blanchett is poised to play the iconic comedian Lucille Ball in a new film.
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The project, which is being produced by Ball's children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr, has been commissioned by the streaming platform Amazon.
Blanchett is yet to sign on the dotted line, but the US trade publication The Hollywood Reporter says the 48-year-old Melbourne-born actress is close.
Though Ball is remembered in US popular culture as the star of I Love Lucy, Australian television audiences would be more familiar with one of her later programs, Here's Lucy, which was aired daily by the Nine Network in the 1980s.
Here's Lucy also starred the then-teenaged Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.
The programs were just two of many sitcoms which featured either Ball, or Ball with members of her family; the others included The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show and Life with Lucy.
Just to give the project a silver lining, the script has been written by Aaron Sorkin, the very notable author of the Broadway play A Few Good Men and the television series The West Wing.
The film will explore Ball's professional and family life and her marriage to Desi Arnaz; Ball and Arnaz were married between 1940 and 1960.