Fox cancels Patty Hurst biopic after US heiress slams film

Fox has cancelled its Patty Hearst biopic after the US heiress blasted the film, saying it romanticised her torture and rape at the hands of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

20th Century Fox pulled the plug on the project this Thursday after Heart criticised the film in a scathing public message.

Fox based its film on the unauthorised biography American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffery Toobin.

But Hearst, granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, took issue with the book’s portrayal of her 1974 kidnapping by a group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army.    

‘Jeffery Toobin’s unauthorized book, ‘American Heiress,’ which cites one of my kidnappers as its main source, romanticizes my rape and torture and calls my abduction a ‘rollicking adventure,’ she said in a statement released by her daughter Lydia Hearst’s spokesperson.    

Hearst especially took issue with Toobin allegedly referring to his book as ‘the last word on the subject,’ she told TMZ.

She added ‘It was offensive to me that a man would have the audacity to tell a woman that he would have the last word on her trauma.’

Toobin’s book calls her abduction a ‘rollicking adventure’ and cites one of its main sources as Patty’s captors. 

Although Fox has cancelled the movie project, a new documentary on CNN is still set to air this February. Pictured: Hearst is sentenced for a bank robbery conviction

Although Fox has cancelled the movie project, a new documentary on CNN is still set to air this February.

The six-part CNN original series, ‘The Radical Story of Patty Hearst,’ includes interviews with Bill Harris, who was part of the SLA, and Steven Weed, who witnessed her violent abduction.

CNN also plans a weekly podcast entitled ‘Patty Has a Gun: The Life and Crimes of Patricia Hearst,’ which will be cohosted by Toobin and CNN’s Brian Stelter.