WB's 'Class' in session with Theron
Thesp in negotiations to join pic after finishing 'Aeon Flux'
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"Class Action" would mark the second film deal for Theron since "Monster." Like Aileen Wuornos, whom she played in her Oscar-winning performance, Theron's "Class Action" character is a woman who has been abused by men all her life until she becomes fed up and does something radical about it. Her remedy is to become the key plaintiff in the first successful sexual harassment prosecution in the U.S.
Scripted by Michael Seitzman, "Class Action" is a fictionalized version of the Jensen v. Eveleth Mines case. Theron will play Josie Aimes, a young mother who flees an abusive husband during the early '70s, heads home to her Minnesota hometown and becomes one of the first women to get jobs in the iron mine that employs most residents, including her father. She and her female co-workers are verbally and physically harassed by their male co-workers. The mine owners turn a deaf ear to their complaints and the women are terrified to lose their jobs. Though she risks being ostracized by her family, Aimes become a Norma Rae-like figure in mobilizing defiance through legal action. Helen Bartlett is exec producing.
Pending a deal, Theron would make the movie after completing "Aeon Flux," the Karyn Kusama-directed futuristic drama being mounted in Berlin this July by Lakeshore Entertainment and Paramount, with MTV Films and Gale Anne Hurd producing. Theron will undergo three months of acrobatic training to prepare for the role of a superhuman assassin who has been programmed to kill a political leader.
