ABC plans Natalie Wood film

Director Peter Bogdanovich, whose last film, “The Cat’s Meow,” dealt with the mysterious death in 1924 of Hollywood producer Thomas Ince aboard a yacht, will turn his attention next to a movie about a Hollywood actress who died under what many still consider to be mysterious circumstances aboard a yacht in 1981.

That actress was Natalie Wood. Bogdanovich was announced Tuesday as the director of a three-hour TV movie for ABC about her life, based on the book “Natasha” (Wood’s birth name), by Suzanne Finstad. Wood drowned after tumbling into the ocean at night while trying to get into an inflatable boat from her 60-foot yacht following an argument with her husband, actor Robert Wagner.

The famed star of such films as “West Side Story,” “Gypsy” and “Inside Daisy Clover” will be portrayed by Justine Waddell, a native of South Africa who has appeared in “Mansfield Park” and “Dracula 2000.”