Matthew Belloni‘s “What I’m Hearing” newsletter has mentioned a forthcoming biopic in which Jennifer Lawrence would play Sue Mengers, the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s Hollywood super-agent.

Mengers was impersonated by Dyan Cannon in The Last of Sheila (’73) and literally portrayed by Bette Midler in I’ll Eat You Last, the 2013 B’way by John Logan. Logan has also written the screenplay for the JLaw project, which Paolo Sorrentino is attached to direct.

I’m not saying there’s a problem with JLaw-as-Mengers, but you have to at least consider the age and physical disparities. Born on 8.15.90, JLaw seems a bit young to portray a 40ish Mengers, who was born in ’32 and hit her professional peak in the ’70s. Midler was in her late ’60s when she played Mengers on stage, and nobody said boo. Plus Midler and Mengers were the exact same height — 5’1″ — while Lawrence is 5’9″.

The main point is that JLaw’s $20 million salary doesn’t seem commensurate with a character-driven biopic of an agent who reigned 40 to 50 years ago. Apple and Netflix are both “jockeying” to produce for the Lawrence-as-Mengers project, Belloni writes. The Apple bid is apparently in the $80 million range.

In traditional theatrical distributor terms an $80 million biopic of this sort wouldn’t really add up. As Belloni points out, Renee Zellweger‘s moderately approvable Judy represented a sensible economic gamble, having cost $10 million and earned $46 million worldwide with Zellweger winning an Oscar. The streamers are basically saying “we don’t care…we have our own economic system…we want JLaw as Mengers.”