Marilyn Monroe Drama from BBC Studios

BBC Studios is developing a new drama series in association with Seven Seas Films that will recount the events of the last six months of Marilyn Monroe’s life.

The series is based on Keith Badman’s The Final Years of Marilyn Monroe: The Shocking True Story, which reveals new details about Monroe’s involvement with American baseball player Joe DiMaggio, John and Bobby Kennedy, and Rat Pack member Peter Lawford. Dan Sefton (Trust Me, The Good Karma Hospital, Delicious, Porters) is writing the series.

The series will be executive produced by Anne Pivcevic (Silent Witness, Great Expectations, The Crimson Field, Little Dorrit) for BBC Studios and Simon Lupton (The Trip, Red Dwarf, My Family, Queen: Days of Our Lives) from Seven Seas Films.

Sefton said: “I am thrilled to be working with BBC Studios to bring this incredible true story to the screen. Marilyn’s desire to be taken seriously as an actress and her battle with the powerful men who control the studio system is sadly as relevant today as it ever was.”

Pivcevic said: “We are delighted to be developing this ambitious drama with Dan, which tackles big themes such as power, love, loyalty and politics. In the last few months of her life, Marilyn was sincerely loved, callously betrayed, cynically filled with hope and ultimately cruelly abandoned. Her death changed the lives of everyone in her orbit and cemented her status as a legend.”