Recommended Videos

It’s been some time since we last reported on Letters From Rosemary – seven months, to be precise – but today the period drama has sprung into life with theater director Sam Gold closing in on a deal to take the reins.

Variety has the scoop, confirming that Gold, a stalwart of Broadway who’s coming off the award-winning Fun Home, will direct Emma Stone in the Rosemary Kennedy film. In what would be Gold’s debut feature film, Letters From Rosemary chronicles the upbringing of John F. Kennedy’s eldest sister – so often referred to as ‘The Forgotten Kennedy’ – who suffered from crippling mental illness from an early age due to medical complications during her birth in 1918.

Years later, Rosemary’s father whipped together plans for her to become one of the very first people to undergo prefrontal lobotomy at the age of 23. A primitive form of treatment, its failure left her permanently incapacitated. Covered up as a family secret for so long – Rosemary died in 2005 at the age of 86 – the tragic story of Rose Marie Kennedy has since been well-documented, and Letters From Rosemary represents a jumping-off point to shed a light on a piece of American history that was, for generations, brushed under the carpet.

No word of a production timeline just yet, but we’ll keep you posted as Letters From Rosemary coalesces. Newcomer Nick Yarborough is attached to flesh out the script while Sam Gold, hot off the success of Fun Home, has teed up a new stage production of Othello with Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo.