Having won an Oscar for playing Katharine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett is to star as another screen legend - comedian Lucille Ball.
The Australian actress is reportedly attached to an authorised bio-pic to be written by Aaron Sorkin, whose drawn-from-real life movies have included The Social Network, Moneyball and the soon-to-be-released Steve Jobs.
The movie is to chronicle Ball's 20-year marriage to Desi Arnaz, the former Cuban band leader who starred alongside her in the classic TV sitcom I Love Lucy. Having eloped after meeting while shooting a movie, they had two children before divorcing in 1960.
A former model and Broadway and Hollywood actress, Ball became famous in the 1950s as the daffy, accident-prone Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy. She went on to star in The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life with Lucy.
Her many awards include four Emmys and, as a pioneering woman both on and off camera in television, induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
I Love Lucy was not only a massive hit, Ball and Arnaz broke ground by pioneering the technique of filming with three cameras in front of a live audience that became standard for sitcoms and the concept of syndicating television programs.
In 1952, they wrote the birth of their second child into the show but network CBS insisted a pregnant woman could not be seen on television and the word "pregnant" could not even be spoken. It took approval from religious figures to allow the storyline although the network insisted "expecting" be used rather than "pregnant". The episode that saw Ricky's birth attracted 44 million viewers.
Ball became the first woman to own her own studio, heading Desilu Productions which produced such hits as Mission: Impossible, The Untouchables and Star Trek. When she sold it in 1967, the studio had 36 sound stages, 2000 employees and 25 hectares next to the Paramount lot.
Just a month before her death in 1989, she and fellow comic Bob Hope were given a standing ovation as they presented at the Academy Awards in her last public appearance.
The magazine TV Guide once voted Ball the Greatest TV Star of All Time and named I Love Lucy the second-best television program in American history behind Seinfeld.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the couple's children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr, will produce the bio-pic with the production company Escape Artists, whose movies have included The Pursuit of Happyness, The Equaliser and Southpaw. No director or other cast are attached yet.
Blanchett recently starred in the hit Cinderella and is being tipped for awards honours for the lesbian romance Carol. Her upcoming movies include the Dan Rather bio-pic Truth, which was shot in Sydney, and Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups.
Watch the famous chocolate wrapping scene from I Love Lucy.
