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Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, & Jude Law Star In Max Perkins Biopic ‘Genius’ 50 Years In The Making

By Amy Feinstein
Published on: 07:30 PST, Jun 11, 2016

The story of Max Perkins, which started as A. Scott Berg’s Princeton undergraduate thesis in 1971, will finally appear as the movie Genius next month in theaters, starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, and Laura Linney. The movie highlights the career of Max Perkins, the literary editor who championed the careers of such greats as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Colin Firth brings Perkins to life and shares the story of a unique editor.

According to the Inquisitr, Colin Firth and Laura Linney have worked together before in the movie favorite Love, Actually. Firth has also worked with Nicole Kidman in the past. Firth is known as a versatile character actor and leading man who becomes his character, and his depiction of Max Perkins is no different.

Vanity Fair explains that Max Perkins was known as the editor who elevated some of the biggest names in American literature and helped them shape their works. A. Scott Berg was known as the undergrad at Princeton who was crazy for Fitzgerald, and he convinced professor Carlos Baker to let him check out little-known Hemingway and Perkins correspondence. Berg’s professor told him that his work was less like a thesis and more like the first draft of a book about the genius of Max Perkins.

But it sounds unlikely that a book about even a rock star editor like Max Perkins would be a natural for Hollywood, even with Colin Firth in the lead role. But the story of Max Perkins and his authors, and the treatment by Berg, had plenty of believers. Playwright and screenwriter John Logan used all of the money he received from Any Given Sunday to support the project about Berg’s book on Perkins.

“It was never about fame, it was never about money—it was about taking a risk on something so unlikely, but I had to do it. The relationship between Perkins and Wolfe was one of the most compelling dances of death I had ever read.”

But working with Berg was a labor of love from Logan’s perspective, and the two worked together for 15 years.

“Scott was very patient with his time. He was in the middle of writing [his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography] Lindbergh, but he always took the time to sit down with me. That generosity of spirit is something that’s very Perkins-like.”

And for Berg, bringing the story of Max Perkins and his authors to life after all of this time was surreal.

“They were doing one of my favorite scenes in the movie: Guy Pearce as F. Scott Fitzgerald coming to Perkins’s office asking for some money. Perkins has to explain to him that Gatsby didn’t sell and Scribner’s just can’t give him any more money. Max Perkins just quietly writes him a personal check and hands it to him. Watching them film it was the strangest and most wonderful sensation. My heart was just pounding.”

Vogue was at the premiere of Genius at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), which was attended by all of the stars, including Colin Firth as Max Perkins and Jude Law as Thomas Wolfe, along with Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney as their significant others. Law explained that he knew little about Thomas Wolfe, but through research, he discovered that Wolfe was “famously raucous, loud, drunken, lecherous.”

The Los Angeles Times says that the movie Genius highlights duos of genius, which include A. Scott Berg and John Logan, Colin Firth and Jude Law, and Max Perkins and Thomas Wolfe. Colin Firth and Jude Law bring the words of Berg and Logan to life, depicting the lives of Perkins and Wolfe.

Berg says that Logan approached him, and together, they were able to bring the lives of some of America’s greatest authors to the screen all at once.

“He said, I have an idea – I don’t want to option your book; I want to buy it. Because if I option the book, we’re going to go to a studio, there’ll be studio executives telling us what it should be. I’ll be happy to take notes from you, but I would like ownership of this material to make a film out of it.”

The star-studded cast combined with a great American author for every taste, plus the editor, Max Perkins, who refined their masterpieces, should make Genius an incredible film for everyone.

Are you eager to see the movie Genius starring Colin Firth as editor Max Perkins?

[Photo by Scott Heppell/AP Images]

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