Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Imagine Entertainment will develop a feature based on the life of legendary surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, with Paige Cameron writing the script. Brian Grazer will produce and Imagine’s Anna Culp will be executive producer along with Cameron.

The Spanish painter lived from 1904 to 1989 and achieved international renown for his unique twists on visual reality, and for a flamboyantly high-profile social life. Cameron’s script will focus on his influences on art, cinema and fashion, and his tumultuous marriage to his equally vivid wife, Gala. Grazer said Cameron presented a plan for movie that made Dali’s life cinematically exciting.

“We are impressed by Paige’s knowledge of Salvador Dalí’s art and his life, as well as by her insights and her storytelling skill,” Grazer said. This is the only Dalí project endorsed by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which will provide Cameron exclusive access to archives, letters, and other materials. The Foundation is a private non-profit organization created by Dalí himself in 1983 to manage his estate.

Said Foundation managing director Joan Manuel Sevillano: “The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation’s interest in a biographical film has always been limited to one that would involve an A-list team. We are delighted to have this project in the hands of Imagine, a production company whose taste and exacting standards of execution are in keeping with Dalí’s legacy, as well as Paige Cameron, a screenwriter we admire and trust.”

Cameron has ties to Spain, where her adaptation of Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants was shot. Her other current scripts include Leaving Ten Sleep, about a champion bull rider, and the Louis Armstrong biopic Satchmo.