Once more, with ‘Tender’-ness

Hollywood has never really been able to get a handle on F. Scott Fitzgerald. Several of the late writer’s classic novels and short stories of the Jazz Age -- including “The Great Gatsby,” “The Last Tycoon” and “Tender Is the Night” -- have been transformed into disappointing films. But producers keep trying.

Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that produced the lavish but lackluster 1962 version of “Tender Is the Night” with Jason Robards as psychiatrist Dick Diver and Jennifer Jones as his unstable wife, Nicole, is developing a new adaptation of the tragic romantic drama. Jesse Wigutow (“It Runs in the Family,” “Ugly Naked People”) has been hired to write the screenplay.