EXCLUSIVE: Fox Searchlight is negotiating to acquire a pitch package for The Fighter helmer David O. Russell to direct a feature about Russ Meyer, the maker of exploitation B-movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Super Vixens. The script will be written by Merritt Johnson. Formerly Russell's assistant on Three Kings, Johnson co-wrote the celebrated HBO telepic Temple Grandin and scripted Lovelace, the pic about Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace and her manipulative husband Chuck Traynor. That film has James Franco and Kate Hudson circling the leads and Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman directing.

The deal to tell the Meyer story is being hashed out, and part of it involves getting rights to the Jimmy McDonough book Big Bosoms And Square Jaws: The Biography Of Russ Meyer, King Of The Sex Film. Meyer began plying his trade in exploitation fare in the early 1960s, as the country was loosening up and the sexual revolution was getting under way. His trademark: placing buxom actresses in grindhouse fare that he wrote, directed, produced and even distributed. To say his casts were well rounded would be an understatement. He owned almost all of his films and as a result died wealthy at age 82 in 2004. CAA is repping the package.