Amy Winehouse biopic in the works from Lily Allen's producer mum Alison Owen
An Amy Winehouse biopic has been given the go-ahead by her family.
The film is set to be produced by Alison Owen, Lily and Alfie Allen’s producer mother, and her production company Monumental Pictures alongside Debra Hayward.
Owen has produced some critically acclaimed British movies including Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks and Suffragette as well as Hulu series Harlots.
Kinky Boots writer Geoff Deane will write the screenplay, ready to shoot in 2019, with the Winehouse family acting as executive producers.
The Winehouse family say they have been approached on several occasions for the rights to the late singer’s life to make the movie but never felt the timing was right.
“We now feel able to celebrate Amy’s extraordinary life and talent,” said Amy’s father Mitch Winehouse in a statement. “And we know through the Amy Winehouse Foundation that the true story of her illness can help so many others who might be experiencing similar issues.”
“We’re proud that Mitch Winehouse has entrusted us with the story of amazing Amy, an icon whose songs have provided the soundtrack to a generation,” Owen and Hayward said in a statement.
Mitch Winehouse says they are hoping to get a British actress to play Amy, not Lady Gaga as had previously been reported.
“I wouldn’t mind betting it would be an unknown, young, English – London, cockney – actress who looks a bit like Amy,” he told the Sun.
“What we want is somebody to portray Amy in the way that she was … the funny, brilliant, charming and horrible person that she was. There’s no point really me making the film because I’m her dad. But to get the right people to do it, that’s very important, and we will.”
The Winehouse family also signed a deal to allow for an Amy Winehouse hologram to go on tour in 2019 and there will be a new documentary coming out called Back to Black which will feature unseen footage of the singer as well as interviews with Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi.
The family were famously unimpressed with Asif Kapadia’s Amy documentary with her father claiming it was not what she would have wanted.
The film did not show him, or certain members of her entourage, in a particularly good light as it showed her rise and fall in the music industry as well as the bulimia and drug addiction that inevitably led to her death from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27.
“I felt sick when I watched it for the first time,” he told the Sun. “Amy would be furious. This is not what she would have wanted.”
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