Blonde Director Says Ana de Armas-Starring Film About Marilyn Monroe Will 'Offend Everyone'

Samir Hussein/WireImage; Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Ana de Armas (L); Marilyn Monroe

Andrew Dominik believes it's an "interesting time" for his upcoming fictionalized movie about Marilyn Monroe to be released.

The 54-year-old director opened up to Vulture about Blonde, which stars Ana De Armas, coming out in the post-#MeToo era.

"If it had come out a few years ago, it would have come out right when #MeToo hit and it would have been an expression of all that stuff," he said. "We're in a time now, I think, where people are really uncertain about where any lines are."

"It's a film that definitely has a morality about it. But it swims in very ambiguous waters because I don't think it will be as cut-and-dried as people want to see it," he added. "There's something in it to offend everyone."

The director admitted he was "surprised" that Blonde — which is an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates' 2000 novel about the Hollywood icon — received an NC-17 rating for "for some sexual content" from the Motion Picture Association in March.

"I thought we'd colored inside the lines," he told the outlet. "But I think if you've got a bunch of men and women in a boardroom talking about sexual behavior, maybe the men are going to be worried about what the women think. It's just a weird time. It's not like depictions of happy sexuality. It's depictions of situations that are ambiguous."

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Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock Marilyn Monroe

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"It's dangerous to do other people's thinking for them. Who knows? On the one hand, I think if I'm given the choice, I'd rather go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story. Because we know that her life was on the edge, clearly, from the way it ended," he continued. "Do you want to see the warts-and-all version or do you want to see that sanitized version?"

Dominik said Blonde chronicles the effect of fame on Monroe's life.

"The idea behind Blonde is basically it details a childhood drama, and mistaken ideas that she carries into her adult life, and she sees the world through the lens of those ideas," he shared. "And they necessitate a split into a public self which can be loved, and a private self which has no hope of achieving intimacy. She's not seeing the world, really; she's seeing herself."

"On a simplest level, it's about an unwanted child who becomes the most wanted person in the world and can't deal with all of that desire coming at them," he added.

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Last year, De Armas, 34, told Byrdie that transforming into Monroe wasn't glamorous.

"I had to go bald every day, because with the blonde wigs… [Marilyn] went through different shades of blonde from golden to really platinum, so for these wigs that are beautifully made, you can't have anything dark underneath, so we had to make a bald cap every single day from my forehead to [around] my whole head," the El Internado star told the outlet.

"It was like, three and a half hours every day of makeup. I think I actually cried the first time I saw [the wigs] on. Probably because I was terrified," she quipped. "But, I'm so proud."

Dominik told Vulture the film will now likely be released in September, after being pushed back from 2020.

"Netflix is a big business with much bigger fish to fry than Blonde, in terms of where they spend their money. They're paying $400 million for movies. A little $22 million movie, it's not going to break the bank for Netflix," he said. "They just want to get their sort of marketing plan in order, I think, before they start rolling it out. Then we've got to work out how they want it to enter the world."