Biopic Canned After Patty Hearst Lashes Out

She accused Fox film of 'romanticizing my rape and torture'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 12, 2018 9:01 AM CST
Biopic Canned After Patty Hearst Lashes Out
Patty Hearst, center, leaves the Federal building in San Francisco, hours after her sentencing on a bank robbery conviction, on April 12, 1976.   (AP Photo, File)

Twentieth Century Fox has canned a movie about Patty Hearst's 1974 kidnapping after she accused it of "romanticizing my rape and torture." In a Thursday statement, Hearst said the film based on Jeffrey Toobin's 2016 biography of her, including details of her kidnapping and indoctrination into the anti-government terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army, was "attempting to rewrite history," per the Washington Post. It "directly flies in the face of the present #MeToo movement where so much progress is being made in regard to listening, and providing a voice, to those who have suffered abuse," added Hearst, granddaughter of the late media mogul William Randolph Hearst. She called Toobin's book "a one-sided dialogue" that "cites one of my kidnappers as its main source" and "calls my abduction a 'rollicking adventure,'" per Deadline.

In reality, it's a story of "a child having been destroyed both inside and out," said Hearst. Now 63, she was just 19 when she was kidnapped by the SLA on Feb. 4, 1974. She was arrested for bank robbery alongside group members a year and a half later but argued she'd been indoctrinated under threat of violence. She spent 22 months in prison before her seven-year sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. Hearst, who was later pardoned, said Thursday that the Fox project would "make me a victim again," reports People. Later Thursday, Fox said it was canceling the planned film, though it did not give a reason, reports Variety. A six-part CNN documentary on the case produced by Toobin will apparently air as planned on Feb. 11. Toobin will also co-host a weekly companion podcast with CNN's Brian Stelter beginning Jan. 26. (More movies stories.)

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