Kim Basginer’s ‘80s classic 9 ½ Weeks could be 'set' for Amazon Prime Video remake

Before a piece of Twilight fan-fiction brought to the world the lurid underbelly of sado-masochism on the big screen, a small film released in 1978, also based on a book, brought tasteful eroticism to the masses. 9½ Weeks was a steamy drama that helped propel the careers of Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke and Academy Award winner Kim Basinger.

The film was a box office flop and polarised critics, with one notable supporter in the form of the late Roger Ebert, who proclaimed the film a success in part thanks to the chemistry between Rourke and Basinger. But people weren’t viewing it on the home video market for its dialogue and themes - truth be told, one of the major selling points was the steamy sex scenes between the pair, launching Basinger as a Hollywood sex symbol.

Nostalgia is a funny creature, as it would appear that enough time has passed for Amazon Prime Video to commission a ten-part streaming series acting as a remake of the cult ‘80s classic, with Kim Basinger cast in a role for the show. That’s according to a report by the Daily Mail, which claims sources stating filming will begin this summer in Manchester and London.

Basinger won’t be playing the lead, however, as the report claims she instead will take on a separate role as a university professor. Whether that professor could be a more mature, distinguished Elizabeth McGraw, who left the SoHo art gallery to become an educator remains to be seen. No other roles have been cast yet, and the current thinking is producers are looking for “lesser-known” names to fill out the cast.

Should the Daily Mail’s report be correct, the remake would mark Basinger’s first role since a voice role in the 2001 short film Back Home Again, and her first on-screen appearance since, believe it or not, 2018’s Fifty Shades Freed - another erotic drama dealing with S&M. So where has Kim Basinger been between roles?

Where has Kim Basinger been since her last on-screen appearance?

Would you believe us if we told you Kim Basinger has been getting involved in the Non-Fungible Token scene? Well, the truth is stranger than fiction, as they say.

Basinger was involved in LIT Project 2: Flux, a short film by late director Peter Bogdanovich and the first NFT collaboration between a legendary director and Oscar-winning actress created specifically for and available only on the Ethereum blockchain. The late Bogdanovich’s manager Oren Segal explained that the filmmaker grew very excited about the possibilities of NFT as a new medium.

Bogdanovich brought Basinger to Segal’s office three weeks ago, where he directed Basinger through a number of emotions. Her emotional expressions vary in time with the movement of a token in the market, commenting on the way we let fluctuating external events create our internal reality, Segal said.

More recently, and perhaps apt given it’s Mother’s Day this weekend, Basinger was spotted at the baby shower of her daughter with Alec Baldwin, Ireland Baldwin. Baldwin, 27, is expecting her first child with her boyfriend musician RAC, 37, whose real name is André Allen Anjos.

The rowdy baby shower, held at dive strip club Jumbo’s Clown Room on Hollywood Boulevard, was also attended by Hillary Duff and Rumer Willis, who is also expecting her firstborn - all the nepo babies together having more nepo babies.

It’s a great visual however to see Kim Basinger out and about, as she opened up about her battle with agoraphobia in a 2022 episode of Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Red Table Talk. “Something just completely shuts down within you and you have to relearn everything I had to relearn to drive, and for many years I would not go through the tunnels at Malibu.”

“Everything used to make me nervous, like the glass [sliding] to open the door, or, ‘Where do I step to open the door?’ Everything became a big job to figure out how to do it. You live with a dry mouth all the time, you’re very shaky, you’re just so exhausted all the time,” she went on.”