Ryan Murphy & Netflix Developing Betty Ford Feature Film

We’ve got word from multiple sources that one of the next Ryan Murphy movies upcoming to Netflix is a feature movie on the former first lady, Betty Ford. Here are all the first details we know about the feature-film.

Before we dive into the details on the project, let’s quickly recap Ryan Murphy on Netflix. In 2018, the prolific screenwriter signed a multi-year deal with Netflix to produce exclusive projects for them.

Multiple projects are in the works including the upcoming limited series Hollywood and Halston. We’ve also got movie projects such as The Prom in the works and new series such as The Politician that will see season 2 release in the summer and the first season of Nurse Ratched due out later this year. You can find every project coming from Ryan Murphy in our extended preview.

Here’s how the feature film is described:

An intimate portrait of the sensational First Lady and ERA champion, Betty Ford, as she challenges, scandalizes, dances and drinks her way through the White House to gain a higher popularity rating than any President in American history, all whilst maintaining a 26 pill-a-day drug habit

Ryan Murphy Productions will be producing the feature film with writing credits including Kas Graham (Lost Passenger, The Blue Lady) and Rebecca Pollock (Saviour, The Blue Lady) attached.

Although Betty Ford should be known to most Americans, for the benefit of readers outside the US, here’s a quick lesson.

Better Ford is a former first lady married to Gerald Ford. She was in the role of the first lady between 1974 and 1977 and was succeeded by Rosalyn Carter.

In a production sheet released by ProductionWeekly in March 2020, they reveal that Sarah Paulson is one of the cast members involved. She’s a Ryan Murphy regular having starred in multiple seasons of American Horror Story and not to mention appearing as the titular character in the upcoming Ratched series.

Development is in the early stages so we don’t suspect we’ll be seeing this movie for a year or two just yet but it is evidence that Ryan Murphy is bringing the goods as part of his output deal with Netflix.

Further evidence of the movie can be found on IMDb where the title has a barebones production page but IMDbPro reveals that Kas Graham and Rebecca Pollock are signed up to be on the writing staff. The page mentions that the movie is in the script phase as of January 2nd, 2020.

The IMDb description (which is much the same as the one above) is as follows:

A portrait of Betty Ford, sensational First Lady and ERA champion, who had higher popularity ratings than any president in US history while maintaining a 26 pill-a-day drug habit.