Amy Winehouse Biopic In The Works, ‘Kinky Boots’ Writer To Pen The Script
Amy Winehouse, the five-time Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter who tragically died in 2011, is officially getting the biopic treatment.
In 2015, A24 released a documentary calledAmythat explored the talented singer’s life, and that film went on to win Best Documentary at the Oscars the next year. Now Winehouse’s story will be dramatized in a more traditional biopic. Read more about it below.
According toThe Wrap,Alison Owen(Saving Mr. Banks, Shaun of the Dead) andDebra Hayward(Les Miserables, Mary Queen of Scots) will executive produce an Amy Winehouse biopic for a small UK-based production company called Monumental Pictures.Kinky BootswriterGeoff Deanewill write the screenplay and executive produce, and production begins sometime in 2019. This sounds like a different project thanthe one that hadPrometheusstar Noomi Rapace attached to play Winehousea few years ago, and it seems like that project has fallen apart since we heard about that casting.
For those who may not remember, Amy Winehouse was the talented singer/songwriter who won five Grammys for her second and final studio album, 2006’s “Back to Black,” which contained songs like “You Know I’m No Good” and “Rehab.” She was often praised for her mixture of genres and styles, particularly jazz and soul.
Winehouse struggled with drugs, alcohol, and bulimia, and she died of accidental alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, making her a member of the “27 Club,” an unofficial group of celebrities like Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison who also died at that age.
Winehouse’s family subsequently set up theAmy Winehouse Foundationwhich “works to prevent the effects of drugs and alcohol misuse on young people,” and The Wrap says that some of the proceeds from this movie will go directly to the Foundation. If you’ve seen the documentaryAmy, though, you’ll probably recall that Amy’s father, Mitch Winehouse, is depicted as something of a villain in Amy’s life; he abandoned his daughter until she became a star, and he later intruded on one of her recovery sessions by bringing a camera crew for a reality TV show with him to Amy’s location so he could appear to be helping her during her recovery.
Mitch Winehouse seems to be the person who’s making most of the decisions about Amy’s legacy in the years since her death – he recently approved an Amy Winehouse hologram tour for 2019. Hehated the 2015 documentarybecause of the way it made him look, but has given his approval to Owen and Hayward for this biopic.
There’s no word yet about who will play Winehouse in the new movie, but Mitch recently explained toThe Sunwhat kind of performer they’re looking for:
“We have been approached many times. [A biopic is] obviously something that we are going to do, 100 per cent. What we want is somebody to portray Amy in the way that she was… the funny, brilliant, charming and horrible person that she was.”
He also specifically said that Lady Gaga, who is currently earning rave reviews for her performance in Bradley Cooper’sA Star is Born, will not be playing Amy Winehouse in the movie because she “doesn’t speak our kind of English,” so take that as you will. We’ll keep you posted when we hear more.
