James Mangold will direct a torrid love affair in Seducing Ingrid Bergman

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

James Mangold is currently prepping what will be Hugh Jackman's last appearance as Wolverine, but the director has already lined up his next project. The Wrap reports that Mangold is attached to direct SEDUCING INGRID BERGMAN from a screenplay by Arash Amel which was voted to the Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays in 2014.

SEDUCING INGRID BERGMAN will tell the story of the dramatic romance between actress Ingrid Bergman and celebrated war photographer Robert Capa. Following the liberation of France by Allied Forces near the end of WWII, Robert Capa found himself kicking up his heels in Paris when he noticed Ingrid Bergman walking into the lobby of the Ritz Hotel and instantly found himself enchanted. Amel's script is based on Chris Greenhalgh's book of the same name and is said to offer some plum parts for what Mangold and the producers hope will be an A-list cast.

Here's the book synopsis via Amazon:

June 1945. When Ingrid Bergman walks into the lobby of the Ritz hotel in Paris, war photographer Robert Capa is enchanted. From the moment he slips a mischievous invitation to dinner under her door, the two find themselves helplessly attracted. Played out against the cafés and nightclubs of post-war Paris and the parties and studios of Hollywood, they pursue an intense and increasingly reckless affair.

But the light-hearted Capa, who likes nothing more than to spend his mornings reading in the tub and his afternoons at the racetrack, is not all that he seems. And Ingrid offers the promise of salvation to a man haunted by the horrors of war, his father's suicide, and the death of a former lover for which he blames himself. Addicted to risk, Capa must wrestle his devils, including gambling and drink, and resist an impulse to go off and photograph yet another war.

Meanwhile, Ingrid, trapped in a passionless marriage and with a seven-year-old daughter to bring up, must court scandal and risk compromising her Hollywood career and saintly reputation if their love is to survive. With their happiness and identities at stake, both Capa and Ingrid are presented with terrible choices.

SEDUCING INGRID BERGMAN still remains in development with Amel currently working on rewrites while James Mangold continues prepping the as-yet-untitled sequel to THE WOLVERINE. The final Wolverine film is set to begin production in January so I imagine that it will be quite some time before we get any more substantial news about SEDUCING INGRID BERGMAN.