Antonio Banderas is set to play Italian designer Gianni Versace in a new biopic.
The Spanish actor, most recently seen in Chilean miners drama The 33, will headline the unauthorised film that the fashion icon’s estate is calling “a work of fiction”.
A representative has said that the company has not “authorised nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming movie”.
It’s set to be directed by Billie August, the Danish film-maker behind the 1998 version of Les Misérables and Smilla’s Feeling for Snow. It will follow Versace’s life from Reggio Calabria, his place of birth, through to Miami where he was murdered by serial killer Andrew Cunanan.
Banderas has recently enrolled as a fashion student at Central Saint Martins university.
“What am I doing here?” he said to 1Granary. “Knowledge. I’m here to gain knowledge, basically. I got to a point where I’ve done 92 movies – I am not going to stop – I’m going to continue doing movies and producing. I want to direct more but there were other things in my life that I was interested in.”
In the 1990s, he launched Antonio Banderas Designs which specialised in perfume and glasses.
