Kennedy Jr's life story in TV movie

John F Kennedy Jr fascinated Americans

A TV film will chronicle the life and premature death in an air crash of of John F Kennedy Jr, based on the new biography American Son.

The 38-year-old son of the assassinated president died in 1999, when the light aircraft he was flying came down in the sea off the US eastern seaboard.

His tragic death was seen as the latest manifestation of the "Curse of the Kennedys" used to describe the deaths and catastrophes that have affected many members of the aristocratic American family.

Ben Affleck in a JFK wig just wouldn't work

Ed Gernon
Alliance Atlantis

News of the CBS film on Kennedy Jr comes as Emilio Estevez plans a film about Robert Kennedy, whose 1968 assassination still looms large in the minds of American liberals.

The Kennedy Jnr film will feature an unknown actor to avoid the distraction of having a star portray a real-life celebrity, said Ed Gernon, vice-president at Alliance Atlantis, which co-owns the book rights.

"Ben Affleck in a JFK wig just wouldn't work," Gernon told showbiz newspaper Variety.

The search is on for a writer to adapt the book by Richard Blow, an editor at Kennedy's defunct George political magazine.

In development

"I envision the script as a coming-of-age story of a young man whose life was in some sense mapped out by the society that worshipped his celebrity," Gernon said.

A CBS spokeswoman said the movie is in development and is likely to be broadcast next season.

Kennedy was killed along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, in the July 1999 plane crash near Martha's Vineyard.

He was at the controls of the single-engine Piper that went down in the ocean.