Amazon acquires Aaron Sorkin’s Lucille Ball biopic

Oh, Luuucy! Your biopic is home.

“Lucy and Desi,” Aaron Sorkin’s feature project about iconic small-screen stars Lucille Ball and her former husband Desi Arnaz, has been acquired by Amazon Studios, according to Deadline. Oscar winner Cate Blanchett has been attached to play the beloved, Emmy-winning comedian in the authorized telling of the sitcom stars’ romantic and business partnerships.

Escape Artists and the couple’s children, Lucie Luckinbill and Desi Arnaz Jr., will produce the film about the lovable redhead and the Cuban bandleader. The project written by “Moneyball” scribe Sorkin was first announced in 2015 and has been making the rounds since.

As for who will play the meddlesome TV housewife’s former husband, that’s still up in the air. Producers are reportedly eyeing Javier Bardem and other big names to star in the biopic, Deadline reported. No word either on who will play their “Lucy” co-stars William Frawley and Vivian Vance, the actors who brought curmudgeonly landlord Fred Mertz and his affable wife Ethel — Lucy’s unwitting scheming partner — to life.

Ball and Arnaz co-founded Desilu Productions in 1950 when they met resistance over Arnaz playing Lucy’s husband, bandleader Ricky Ricardo, on their show. When the comedy became a runaway hit and globally televised phenomenon, they sold their “I Love Lucy” films to CBS for $6 million.

Then, when she and Arnaz ultimately split in 1960, she bought her ex’s interest in Desilu, which produced “Star Trek” and “Mission: Impossible,” among other series. Ball became the first woman to head a major studio and one of the most powerful women in Hollywood.

The Arnaz children have controlled the rights to their parents’ memoirs since the TV stars died in the 1980s. The rights package is said to include access to those tales.

“Lucie Arnaz has been incredibly, unbelievably generous,” Blanchett told Entertainment Weekly of the project in 2016. “We met a few years ago and started talking about this, and now Aaron Sorkin is in advanced talks to adapt her mother and father’s story. It’s incredible.”