How did a film about Marilyn Monroe end up as Netflix’s first NC-17 release?
A detail of the trailer for Netflix’s Marilyn Monroe film Blonde that may surprise some viewers is the NC-17 rating at the end. The film is clearly artistically shot, and seems to have an intense, dramatic tone, but in other respects it could pass for a traditional, tragic celebrity life story. What has earned it the MPA’s most stringent, adults-only rating — a first for any Netflix film?
Blonde is written and directed by Andrew Dominik, an Australian filmmaker who made his name with the 2000 crime film Chopper and the Brad Pitt-starring elegiac Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. The uncompromising Dominik is much admired by peers like David Fincher, who hired him to direct several episodes of Mindhunter. But Dominik hasn’t had a big commercial success yet, and has sometimes struggled to get films made on his terms.
Blonde is not a straight biography of Monroe, but instead a heavily fictionalized version of her story, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. Dominik has been trying to get it made since as early as 2010. The book features some shocking, graphic scenes, and it seems Dominik has insisted that these make it into his movie.
Blonde, which stars Cuban actor Ana de Armas (Knives Out, No Time to Die) as Monroe, was shot in 2019. According to reports, it was originally slated for release in 2021 before Netflix delayed it to 2022. No reason was given for the delay, but rumors circulated that Netflix had objected to some of the film’s more extreme content, and was considering reediting it to avoid the NC-17 rating.
These rumors were eventually confirmed, more or less, by an interview Dominik gave to Screen Daily in February 2022.
Dominik laughed off the notion that the film
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