Sam Taylor-Johnson to direct political drama

Sam Taylor-Johnson is best known for her blockbusting adaptation of erotic thriller Fifty Shades of Grey but now she’s moving in a rather different direction with THR reporting that she is to direct a film about the notorious Chappaquiddick incident in 1969.

The movie will dramatise the incident in which Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old former staffer for Robert Kennedy, drowned after Ted Kennedy apparently lost control of his car on a bridge over a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts.

Taylor-Johnson opted not to return to Fifty Shades for its planned sequels, despite its box office success. Instead she’s chooses to tackle a more serious subject with big names expected to be announced on the cast list.