Dakota Johnson Is Playing Marilyn Monroe in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s New Film, and the First Look Barely Reads as Her
Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote the script in a single weekend and got Dakota Johnson to play a young Marilyn Monroe at the height of her fame. Ellen Burstyn, 93, plays an older Monroe who lived the life the real one never got to. The first images of Johnson in the blonde wig and 1950s makeup barely read as her.
Gyllenhaal’s “Flesh Impact” is a 17-minute short she wrote over one weekend, and it imagines what Monroe’s life might have looked like if she hadn’t died at 36.
Johnson plays the young, famous Monroe. Ellen Burstyn plays an older version, the one who got to keep going. It premieres at the 2026 Venice Film Festival in September, where Gyllenhaal is serving as jury president and Burstyn is receiving the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The timing lines up with what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday.
Peter Sarsgaard and Sepideh Moafi round out the cast. The project is presented with Genesis and has the blessing of Monroe’s estate.
Gyllenhaal told Vanity Fair that Johnson “was always on my mind” while she was writing. She briefly worried about the resemblance, then let it go. “That’s ridiculous. Who cares?” she said, adding that Monroe has become such a myth that “I don’t know that anyone even really totally knows what Marilyn looks like.”
She’s called the film a love letter. The title comes from a phrase Billy Wilder once used to describe what Monroe did on screen.
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