After drawing criticisms for exploiting J.D. Salinger with a tacky documentary, Harvey Weinstein figures he may as well go all in with a dramatization of the personal life of the author who spent so much of it in seclusion, specifically to avoid having his personal life documented and dramatized. Deadline reports that The Weinstein Company and Salinger director Shane Salerno are reteaming not only to add supplemental footage to Salinger for its upcoming wide release—footage that promises to further explore “his complex relationships with young women,” which will surely be handled as tactfully as their addition is now being trumpeted as a marketing point—but also to turn it into a more traditional biopic.
That biopic will focus on “Salinger’s life between his service in World War II and the publishing of Catcher In The Rye, examining the effects war can have on an artist” in a way that Salinger was, regrettably, only able to address through stock footage playing behind a stand-in. But now, by fully dramatizing it, they can really get inside the head of the man who did everything he could to ensure that would never happen, but who’s dead now, so fuck him.