According to The Playlist, Incognito Pictures has agreed to finance Freeheld, a feature project starring Ellen Page as a woman denied the pension benefits of her female New Jersey police detective partner after the latter became terminally ill. It’s not only based on a true story, it’s based on a short documentary that won an Oscar.
The screenplay comes from Ron Nyswaner, himself an Oscar nominee for his work writing Philadelphia. With Page’s Oscar nomination, it makes the pedigree of this thing severe, and with docs like How to Survive a Plague and the headline-status of gay rights in the political sphere, the tide seems to be lifting all boats attempting to tell these kinds of stories. If you’re so inclined, you can check out the original short documentary here.