About the title
Rumors about this story had circulated since the early 1940s. Former journalist Mankiewicz, a legend of studio-era Hollywood — remembered by his contemporaries as an incurable alcoholic, a gambler, and the wittiest man of his generation — had a hand in creating dozens of films in the 1930s. He earned handsomely and was quite content to go without a screen credit. Yet he went down in history precisely as the screenwriter of Citizen Kane, for which he won an Oscar in 1942 (the only category in which the famous film won). So, the celebrated Hollywood screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz becomes embroiled in creative disagreements with director Orson Welles. The cause of the unresolved dispute is the authorship of the famous 1941 drama Citizen Kane. Of course, Mank is Gary Oldman's film, the most significant role of his career. His careworn elegance, drawing a thread from Stoppard's Rosencrantz to his Oscar-winning Churchill, here reaches its next stage.