Amy Winehouse Biopic for Back to Black Set With Fifty Shades

A biopic about Amy Winehouse is in the works, helmed by Nowhere Boy director Sam Taylor-Johnson. European studio Studiocanal is backing the film, which has been tightly under wraps. Variety understands that a script for the movie has begun circulating and is now in casting stages. It’s believed Taylor-Johnson hopes to cast a relative newcomer for the part of Winehouse.

The film is believed to be very much a passion project for Taylor-Johnson, who was a close friend of Winehouse’s. Interestingly, Back to Black has the full support of Mitch Winehouse, the late singer’s father, who was portrayed in a negative light in the Oscar-winning documentary Amy. Mitch Winehouse also participated in the 2021 BBC documentary Reclaiming Amy, which marked the 10-year anniversary of Amy’s death.

Back to Black has been written by Matt Greenhalgh, who previously collaborated with Taylor-Johnson on Nowhere Boy and also wrote Control, the critically acclaimed biopic about the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. Studiocanal is producing with Alison Owen and Debra Hayward alongside Tracey Seaward.

Winehouse, best known for hit songs such as Rehab and You Know I’m No Good, died at 27 of alcohol poisoning in 2011. She produced two albums, Frank and Back to Black, the latter of which earned her six Grammy awards.

A biopic about her life has been in the works for a number of years, with Owen and Hayward attached from the very beginning. The Winehouse estate first signed a deal for the movie back in 2018, though an earlier script was originally penned by Kinky Boots writer Geoff Deane.

Back in 2018, Winehouse denied suggestions that Lady Gaga might sign on to play the troubled singer. I wouldn’t mind betting it would be an unknown, young, English — London, cockney — actress who looks a bit like Amy, he told British tabloid The Sun at the time.

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.

‘Middlesex’ Series in Development at Paramount Television Studios has acquired the television rights to the book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides in a competitive situation, Variety has learned exclusively.

The book was first published in 2002 and has gone on to sell more than 4 million copies. It also won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. It was previously in the works as a series at HBO back in 2009.

The story follows Calliope Cal Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family as they travel from their tiny village to Prohibition-era Detroit, eventually witnessing the race riots of 1967 before moving out to suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Over the course of the story, Cal discovers that he is intersex, tracing his transformation to a genetic condition that runs through the family.

David Manson is attached to write the series with Sam Taylor Johnson onboard to direct. Manson, who is under an overall deal at Paramount TV Studios, has previously worked as a writer and executive producer on the critically-acclaimed Netflix shows Ozark, Bloodlines, and House of Cards.

He is repped by Behr Abramson Levy.

Taylor Johnson directed the blockbuster film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey and the opening two episodes of the Netflix series Gypsy. She is also known for directing the films A Million Little Pieces — based on the book of the same name — and Nowhere Boy.

She is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Sloane Offer.

Should the show move forward this time, it would mark the thrd time Eugenides’ work has been adapted for the screen. His debut novel The Virgin Suicides was adapted into a film by Sofia Coppola in 1999, while his short story Baster was adapted into the 2010 film The Switch. He is repped by Lynn Nesbit of Janklow & Nesbit for publishing and by CAA for film and TV.

Paramount TV Studios’ current shows include Amazon’s Jack Ryan starring John Krasinski, Apple’s Home Before Dark and Defending Jacob, and The Haunting anthology series at Netflix.