EXCLUSIVE: Sony has acquired and tapped Oscar-nominated The Holdovers screenwriter David Hemingson to adapt Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s memoir An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.
Playtone partners Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman and Eon Productions’ Barbara Broccoli initially optioned the book and will produce alongside Goodwin and her Pastimes Productions partner Beth Laski. Deal comes just as the paperback edition hit bookstores April 14. The hardcover was a No. 1 New York Times Bestseller when Simon & Schuster published it. It was around that time that Deadline broke news that Playtone and 007 producer Broccoli acquired the movie rights for the book.
The epic, intimate love story between Goodwin and her late husband Richard Goodwin coincides with the direct involvement of each in many of the most turbulent events of the 1960s. It offers a singular path to look back at a decade defined by profound upheaval and idealism.
Richard Goodwin was a true Zelig in the sense he seemed to be at the center of every flashpoint event of the decade. That started with heading a congressional investigation into suspicions that wildly popular TV game shows like 21 were fixed. His sleuthing ended with the bombshell confession by popular game show champ Charles Van Doren that he was being fed answers in advance (Goodwin was played by Rob Morrow in the Robert Redford-directed 1994 film Quiz Show).
Goodwin moved from there to become the youngest member of the New Frontiersman, the inner circle of President John F. Kennedy. That started after he joined the speechwriting staff when Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon. Goodwin was at JFK’s side through everything from civil rights reforms to the Bay of Pigs and the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the formation of the Peace Corps. Goodwin’s speechwriting framed an era of idealism that was somewhat extinguished when JFK was assassinated in Texas.
After fulfilling widow Jackie Kennedy’s wishes and securing the eternal flame that continues to burn at JFK’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery, Goodwin then became an advisor and speechwriter of JFK’s successor Lyndon Johnson, at his side for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that followed the globally televised brutal beatings of peaceful demonstrators at the foot of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL.
Goodwin resigned his White House post because he disagreed with the escalating Vietnam War. He later became an architect of the presidential campaign of JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy. RFK’s assassination, piled on top of the murder of JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and the raging war, prompted Goodwin to exit politics. He become a writer, although he did return to help Al Gore write his concession speech after the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in Bush v. Gore.
Kearns Goodwin fell in love with Goodwin as she began her progression toward becoming one of America’s foremost historians and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seminal books on Abraham Lincoln (a basis for the Steven Spielberg-directed Lincoln), and also Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt. She became a White House Fellow under LBJ, surviving even after publication in the New Republic of an article she wrote, titled “How to Dump Lyndon Johnson.” She wrote the piece before taking that fellowship, and in a different political climate than we see today, LBJ read the piece and vowed to win her over. Apparently, it worked because she helped him write his memoirs.
She met Goodwin while at Harvard and they fell in love slowly, and married in 1975. Eventually, when Goodwin turned 80, he was finally ready to face the sadness of how the idealism of the ‘60s ended, and together they cracked into 300 boxes of letters and papers he dragged everywhere, and took on writing the memoir. Goodwin died from cancer in 2018, and then it was on Kearns Goodwin to finish what they started, as she grieved the loss of the love of her life.
Sony EVP Andrea Giannetti will oversee the project for the studio.
Hemingson is the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated scribe of the Alexander Payne-directed The Holdovers, and he was the creator, executive producer and writer of the Fox comedy series Kitchen Confidential, with Bradley Cooper starring in the adaptation of the Anthony Bourdain memoir. He’s also written and produced series including Just Shoot Me, American Dad, Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother and Black-ish.
Hemingson has a towering task here, but he has been gifted an ending with Goodwin’s last words to his wife. Kearns Goodwin described it to Deadline: “He took my hand and put it on his chest. And then he just said — and how anybody can say this at the last moment is crazy – but he said, ‘You are a wonder.’ And then that was it.”
Said Goodwin: “We could not have found a better writer or partner than David to tell a story that is so personal and means so much to me. What makes him truly special is his gift for storytelling, his deep humanity and heart, along with his genuine love and deep knowledge of history and the way he brings it to life—with a rare blend of humor, warmth, and nuance.”
Hemingson is repped by WME and 3 Arts Entertainment, Pastimes & Broccoli are repped by WME, and Playtone and the book are repped by CAA.
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