Movies often come in twos — two Truman Capote films, two meteor- or asteroid-based disaster movies, two computer-animated movies about ants, and so on — so it’s not too surprising that Variety brings news of two different films in the works based on the polygamist sect led by Warren Jeffs, who was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 2006 and was convicted of being an accomplice to rape in 2007.
First, there was an announcement regarding Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs, a memoir by Elissa Wall that has been picked up by Jeffrey Sharp and Christine Vachon, who previously collaborated on Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and A Home at the End of the World (2004).
Next, there was an announcement regarding Escape, the much more briefly titled memoir by Carolyn Jessop, which has been picked up by Katherine Heigl, star of Knocked Up (2007) and 27 Dresses.
Interestingly, the sect led by Jeffs belonged to a fundamentalist branch of the Mormon faith, whereas Heigl was raised in the mainline Mormon church, for lack of a better word, and she still speaks well of the church even though she doesn’t attend any more. So it is particularly interesting that she would be tackling a film on this subject.
Mormon polygamy is, of course, central to the TV series Big Love, which has been on the air since 2006 — and while I have never seen that show, I gather from Wikipedia that the characters on that show worry that people like Warren Jeffs have made their own branch of Mormonism look worse than it is.
Muslim polygamy is also becoming big news in North America, or at least in Canada. Are there any films or TV shows that cover the subject from that angle, I wonder?
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