Just In time for the 250th anniversary of American independence, Quad Cinema and Gemma Pictures have announced that Christian Duguay will direct Lady Liberty, a historical feature about the creation pf the Statue of Liberty in the 1880s. According to a joint release, the film will focus on tracing “the artistic audacity of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the political vision of Édouard de Laboulaye, and the engineering ingenuity of Gustave Eiffel.”

No further details about the casting or release date have yet been announced.

 The upcoming film will focus on how Bartholdi, the visionary artist, and Labolaye, the revolutionary lawyer, overcame the financial and technical challenges they faced while creating the colossal statue designed to commemorate the struggle for liberty and democracy in the United States.

Moviegoers will recall that the Statue of Liberty has appeared in several recent films, including Planet of the Apes, where it was seen buried in the sand, and Ghostbusters 2, where it came to life and walked through the streets of Manhattan. But it has never before been a principal character in a major Hollywood production.

Duguay, a Canadian, directed several acclaimed films that were both critical and financial successes in France and beyond, including Jappeloup and A Bag of Marbles. The former film, about horse-racing, starred Guillaume Canet, while the latter, set during WWIi, was adapted from the novel by Joseph Joffo. Duguay also directed a film about Pope Pius XII during the war years.

Quad Cinema produced Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s The Itouchables, which grossed $426 million worldwide. Lady Liberty is being created by the producers of La Famille Belier, which was remade into the Oscar-wining CODA. Gemma Pictures was founded by Stéphane Celerier, whose previous company Mars Films co-produced La Famille Belier and Two is a Family.

Check out other articles by Edward