Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville are joining the ensemble cast of the Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” at StudioCanal, Focus Features and Monumental Pictures.
Marisa Abela stars as the Grammy-winning singer who died in 2011 at 27. The story will follow Winehouse’s rise to fame in London in the early 2000s as she became one of the most popular recording artists in recent history, selling over 30 million records worldwide and generating over 80 million streams per month.
Her “Back to Black” album became her signature work, along with the immensely popular song “Rehab”. The film will explore her whole life and unfold Amy’s story through her eyes.
Sam Taylor-Johnson (“Nowhere Boy”) directs from a script by Matt Greenhalgh and the full support of Universal Music Group, Sony Music Publishing, and The Amy Winehouse Estatee.
O’Connell, coming off recent roles in “SAS Rogue Heroes” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” will play the love of Winehouse’s life Blake Fielder-Civil. The two married 2007, but after a tumultuous relationship filled with booze and drugs that led to stints in rehab, they divorced prior to Winehouse’s death.
Marsan (“Vesper”) will play Winehouse’s father, and Manville (“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”) will play her maternal grandmother. Alison Owen and Debra Hayward are producing, and filming is set to begin on Monday in London.
Source: Deadline
