The Weinstein Co. has announced they will finance and distribute The Ends of the Earth, about an oil tycoon who loses everything when he begins a controversial love affair with his adopted daughter, Lydie Marland, to be played by Jennifer Lawrence.
No director has been chosen for the project but the script was written by Chris Terrio, who also wrote Argo.
No word on who will play the 50-something E.W. Marland, with whom she has an affair and later marries (and remains with him until his death). After his marriage, he switches from being a Republican to a Democrat, then becomes a congressman and then governor of Oklahoma, with Lydie as his first lady. Her story is stranger:
“After Mr. Marland’s death in 1941, Lydie continued to live in her cottage. She lived a quiet, reclusive life and some people even thought she had died. Then, in 1953, she loaded her Studebaker with paintings and tapestries and left Ponca City, not to be seen again locally for 22 years. For most of that time, very few people knew where she was and once again, some even thought she had died. The Saturday Evening Post ran an article entitled “Where is Lyde Marland?” However, while she was gone, she was in touch with her attorney and continued to pay taxes on the little cottage and property that Marland had left to her in his will. She lived on the west coast for a while and in New York City near Central Park. In the 1960’s, during the unrest that surround the Vietnamese War and civil rights, she participated in peace marches in Washington, D.C.”
