MUSCLE SHOALS — A trunk discovered in a Louisiana attic drew Tonya Holly toward a life of crime.

Inside the trunk were newspapers from the 1930s chronicling the lives and deaths of infamous bandits Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. When her mother and stepfather brought the newspapers home to Muscle Shoals, 16-year-old Holly read them all.

“I got fascinated,” Holly said. “I did a research paper in high school about what happens to criminals. I made an A on it.”

In 1990, Holly was driving to Charlottesville, Va., to work as a set productionist on the film “Toy Soldiers” when she had the idea to write a script about the pair. She began writing during her six-month stint in Charlottesville.

“I started writing a script then found out Fox was doing a Bonnie and Clyde movie for television,” said Holly, who has now directed two feature films and has a production company called Cypress Moon Productions in Muscle Shoals. “I got discouraged and put it aside, but I always knew I would do it someday.”

Sixteen years later, that day is close at hand. The script for “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” was completed a few weeks ago and Holly said funding for the film soon should be confirmed. Then, she said, she hopes to lure two of Hollywood’s young elite for the leads. She said some A-list actors are interested, but she cannot release the names.

“I do have the interest of two pretty big ones,” she said. “Hopefully, if our financing comes in pretty soon, we can lock these people in.”

But, Holly is quick to say, her film is not a “remake” and will not be like the 1967 film “Bonnie and Clyde,” which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as a stylized, romanticized Barrow and Parker.

“The only thing similar is some of the factual things that happened,” Holly said of her script. “That film had maybe five central characters; there are probably 80 speaking roles in mine.”

A love story

Holly spent hours researching Barrow and Parker, including reading more than 30 books and interviewing surviving family members.

“It’s as factual as I can make it, but the people it’s about died in 1934 so their conversations and the ideas in their minds, their dreams and what they were thinking is a creative effort,” she said.

In some cases, Holly said, being sure of the “facts” has been difficult.

“I find so many conflicting stories,” she said. “Sometimes it’s tough to know which was the truth. Even the people that knew them, even people that were there at the time of the posse tell different stories.”

Holly said she interviewed Boots Hinton, son of Ted Hinton, who was a member of the posse which shot and killed Bonnie and Clyde as they sat in their car in rural Louisiana in 1934. Ted Hinton recorded the gruesome scene on an 8 mm camera.

“I also met relatives of Bonnie and Clyde at the Bonnie and Clyde Festival in Gibsland, La.,” she said.

Holly’s research convinced her that Bonnie Parker did not take part in any of the 12 murders the Barrow gang was accused of committing, including the Grapevine, Texas, murders in which highway patrolmen Edward Bryan Wheeler and H.D. Murphy were shot to death on Easter Sunday 1934.

“Bonnie didn’t kill anybody; that is a misconception,” she said. “She actually had a fear of guns originally. I don’t think Clyde set out to be a murderer, but he became one. His fear of going back to prison (led to murder). The one thing concurrent in everything is that it was a love story. They did love each other.”

Holly hopes to begin filming in a few months.

“I’ll hopefully get to go into production this fall. That’s my goal,” she said. “The worst- case scenario is pre-production in the fall and shoot in the spring.”

Limestone location?

Holly said she plans to film some scenes in “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” in Birmingham and some in Louisiana. But as with her previous feature film “When I Find the Ocean,” she hopes to make use of north Alabama locales, perhaps including Limestone County.

Holly was in Limestone County in 1995 when the movie “Tom and Huck” was being filmed in Mooresville, where she helped paint sets.

“I painted everything that didn’t move,” she said. “If I couldn’t get one job on a film, I would take another. It’s been really helpful. I learned things on that film I used in ‘Mirror’ and ‘When I Find the Ocean.’”

A technique she learned on “Tom and Huck” appears in both films she directed.

“We didn’t have hardwood floors in ‘Mirror,’ but I learned a technique on ‘Tom and Huck’ to make a floor look like a hardwood floor,” she said. “I used the same technique again on ‘When I Find the Ocean.’ I went and showed them myself.”

She has worked in most every aspect of filming, from casting to filmography.

Holly appreciates the beauty of this area and would love to do most of the filming here, but she said her hands may be tied by finances.

“The toughest thing about my home state is there is no incentive comparable to Louisiana and South Carolina,” she said. “When you’ve got investors that want those incentives, they kind of help call the shots. I really love the location here. I’m really going fight to do as much as I can.”

Holly has been lobbying to make Alabama more competitive as a film location.

“We have the locations,” she said. “We have to get people to talk to legislators to get incentives in place. We’re manufacturing a product, just like you manufacture a car, and it can get into the millions.”

She expects much of the filming will be done in Louisiana, which is where Bonnie and Clyde were eventually killed.

Time travel

Although “When I Find the Ocean” was set in the 1960s, costuming actors for a 1930s film offers an exciting challenge for Holly.

“I love history and I’m very excited about that,” she said. “A lot of my ideas for my next few films, most of them are period pieces, the Civil War, the Native American time period.”

To find the people who will be wearing those costumes, Holly will announce a casting call once financing is in place.

“I will be using as many folks from Alabama as I can possibly use,” she said.

Holly will also be looking for another important member of the cast — Depression-era automobiles.

“The biggest concern for me are the cars,” she said. Although some refurbished antiques can be used for parked cars, or those driving past, she needs something more sturdy for stunts.

“They’ll have to be built for safety for stunts,” she said. “We will have to buy the ones we have to wreck.”

But the stunts are another element of the film Holly is eagerly anticipating.

“I’m ready for an action picture,” she said.