Acclaimed director Ava DuVernay (Selma) is in talks to helm The Battle of Versailles for HBO, which she is also co-writing, reports The Wrap.
The film will is based on the 2015 book The Battle Of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled Into The Spotlight And Made History written by fashion journalist Robin Givhan.
It focuses on the story of “the 1973 Palace of Versailles fashion show that helped put black models and American designers on the map”, where a fundraiser “for the restoration of King Louis XIV’s palace, it pitted the top five French designers (Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior) against five then-unknown Americans (Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, Halston, Stephen Burrows and Anne Klein, who brought along her then-assistant Donna Karan)” which would see the industry changed forever.
DuVernay is certainly in demand after Selma – last year, she turned down the chance to direct Marvel’s Black Panther, with Creed’s Ryan Coogler hired instead, and she is set to direct Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time, an adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1963 time travel novel scripted by Jennifer Lee (Frozen).
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Originally published March 22, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
