The film industry has always liked a musician biopic: not only do they tend to be inordinately famous (far more so than most authors/scientists/politicians you care to mention) as well as leading extravagantly eventful lives (ditto), they can also be relied on to drag with them a lucrative spin-off soundtrack and inject that indefinable air of louche hipness that other movies almost always lack. If you get it right, a musician biopic can be a peach of a role for someone (as Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter discovered). We’re currently experiencing a mini-wave of the genre, with films about soul maestro James Brown (Get On Up) and guitar slinger Jimi Hendrix (Jimi: All Is By My Side) making their way into cinemas. And there are more on the way …
HANK WILLIAMS
In between gigs as Loki in innumerable Thor and Avengers movies, housewives’ choice Tom Hiddleston is shooting I Saw the Light, a biopic of pioneering country act Williams who died aged 29 in 1953. Hiddleston’s casting in the role is not without controversy – Williams’ grandson has vociferously objected to a squeaky-voiced Brit playing his grandpa – though Hiddleston does bear a striking resemblance to the singer. Hiddleston has also shown he can carry off a musician role, having played a gaunt, centuries-old rocker in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive – and knocked out the crowd at the Wheatland music festival in Michigan with a couple of Williams classics.
FREDDIE MERCURY
This has been bit of a saga. The world first learned that a biopic of the Queen frontman was in serious development when it was revealed in 2010 that Sacha Baron Cohen was due to play the lead role. However, three years later Baron Cohen ducked out after reported disagreements with the surviving members of the band, who were apparently concerned that Baron Cohen was “too recognisable” and would turn Mercury into “a joke”. Ben Whishaw, a more sensitive-seeming figure, has replaced Baron Cohen; the occupant of the director’s chair is yet to be ascertained, as original pick Dexter Fletcher bailed in March. It has heavyweight producers behind it, including actor Robert De Niro, so in all likelihood this won’t run out of steam; it’s just taking its time.
BRIAN WILSON
Ever since the former Beach Boy sensationally re-emerged in 2004 with his long-lost album Smile, after decades of seclusion and rumour, a movie was always going to be on the cards. And so it proved, with producer Bill Pohlad reviving a project that had apparently been sitting around since the late 1980s, and then taking the directorial reins himself. The subsequent film, Love & Mercy, after Wilson’s 1988 single from his first solo album, has turned out to be one of those fashionably non-linear affairs, with Paul Dano playing the fresh-faced 1960s Wilson, breaking musical boundaries with Pet Sounds, and John Cusack the raddled 1980s incarnation, struggling to break his isolation through extended therapy. The reviews have been decent, though hardly ecstatic; with no release date set for the US or UK, it may be a while before everyone else gets a look.
FRANK SINATRA
For the past half decade, a biopic of the Chairman of the Board has been the property of one man: Martin Scorsese. Ever since it was formally announced in 2009, it has seemed a natural pairing: the greatest Italian-American director on the greatest Italian-American singer. Actually, getting it off the ground has been another story. Scorsese has multiple projects on the go, and getting one of the few A-listers able to carry the film is always going to be tricky – Scorsese reportedly has been considering George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, with the latter named as Scorsese’s first choice – though of course a multi-stranded Love & Mercy style piece is always an option. Apparently the project is still very much on, but it’s in that will-it-won’t-it grey zone.
MILES DAVIS
A passion project for Don Cheadle – who is credited as director, star, co-writer and producer – this account of the legendary jazz man’s “silent period” in the late 70s is now called Miles Ahead, rather than the tangy Kill the Trumpet Player. It started filming in July this year, ballasted by a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $340,000, with Ewan McGregor (as a music journalist) decorating the cast. Despite his awful cockney accent in the Ocean’s Eleven films, Cheadle is a much-liked figure, and everyone (you would think) will want him to succeed. The Davis family are on his side too, so at least the film can use Davis’s actual music – though Herbie Hancock is on board as composer, so no doubt we’ll find out how the soundtrack has been carved up.
JANIS JOPLIN
The raspy-voiced blues moaner has been in Hollywood’s crosshairs for more than a decade, with one project after another biting the dust. Pink, Zooey Deschanel and Renée Zellweger have all been in the frame to play Joplin, who died in 1970 after a heroin overdose, with Fernando Mereilles, Penelope Spheeris and Catherine Hardwicke all possibilities behind the camera. The moving finger, however, seems to have settled on Amy Adams in an effort called Get It While You Can, and though Lee “The Butler” Daniels was being talked up as director back in 2012, his name appears to have disappeared from the credits. That means this one has gone back in the betting, though Adams – thoroughly starrified after her fifth Oscar nomination for American Hustle – ought to have the clout to force it through.
SUSAN BOYLE
With all those millions of Youtube hits behind her, you’d have thought a Susan Boyle movie would be a safe bet. But as the film industry has learned to its cost, clickthrough doesn’t necessarily translate to box office. That hasn’t stopped a series of properly idiotic attempts at media seeding, with Boyle herself suggesting Meryl Streep was seriously looking at the role. Back on planet Earth, there may be movement on this, as Simon Cowell has definitely got the taste for movie-making, and he’s never been slow to exploit one of his Britain’s Got Talent/X-Factor properties. 20th Century Fox has also shown an interest, particularly in the jukebox musical I Dreamed a Dream, which set out on tour in 2012. One small hurdle – Syco is backed by Fox’s rival studio Sony, so this may take some working out. File under: possible.
KURT COBAIN
The former Nirvana frontman, who killed himself in 1994, is another one of those tragic-glamour figures who gets film-makers so hot under the collar. Nick Broomfield got his Kurt & Courtney documentary out in 1998 and Gus Van Sant’s 2005 film Last Days was a thinly disguised Cobain pic, featuring Michael Pitt as someone called Blake. Makers of any “official” version will have to make a deal with Courtney Love, and she appears to have settled on Brett Morgen, best know for his documentaries on the Rolling Stones (Crossfire Hurricane) and Robert Evans (The Kid Stays in the Picture). The project has landed with Britain’s Working Title and you would think they will set it up with their usual professionalism – though little actual progress appears to have been made, as no writer, director or actors have been announced. Still, Morgen is optimistic, telling the NME that it “will be this generation’s The Wall – a mix of animation and live action that’ll allow the audience to experience Kurt in a way they never have before. It’s very ambitious.”
GREGG ALLMAN
After being given a Hollywood boost by Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (which was partly inspired by Crowe’s Rolling Stone writing assignment to cover an Allman Brothers tour in the early 70s), Allman himself got a film off the ground based on his memoir, My Cross to Bear. However, the whole thing collapsed in February when, shortly after shooting began, camera assistant Sarah Jones was killed by a train on set. Mired in lawsuits and criminal indictments, the film appears to have been abandoned, not least at Allman’s own urging – who, as executive producer, is also a defendant in a wrongful death suit brought by Jones’s parents. The project is not likely to be revived; a sad outcome of a tragic incident.
