Since her untimely death in 2011, fans of the London performance dynamo have yearned for the storied life of Amy Winehouse to receive the big-screen biopic treatment. Now, it finally looks like the project is a go, with some Hollywood heavyweights behind it. While casting of Winehouse looks to be focusing on a “relative newcomer” (more on that later) Variety reports that Fifty Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor-Johnson (a close friend of Winehouse’s) is on board to direct, with Back To Black being penned by Matt Greenhalgh, who previously collaborated with Taylor-Jonson on Nowhere Boy.
While a previous Amy Winehouse biopic was buzzed about several years ago (with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’s Noomi Rapace star attached), the only time fans have gotten a peek behind the scenes of Winehouse’s life so far is in the 2015 documentary Amy (which went on to win the Academy Award for ‘Best Documentary’ in 2016). As for the casting of the “Valerie” crooner for the biopic, that is poised to “begin in the weeks to come”. One performer fans are already buzzing about possibly bringing the “Love Is A Losing Game” performers life and career to life is Lady Gaga. In 2011, Winehouse’s father Mitch Winehouse responded to these rumors saying to The Mirror “I have heard that Lady Gaga is keen to play Amy in a film,”….”I don’t know what her English accent is like but it’s not just an English accent she would have to perfect—it’s an English-Cockney-Jewish accent so she better start practicing now. But she would be great.”
In 2018 though, Mitch Winehouse’s opinion seemed to distinctly change about having Mother Monster portray the “Back To Black” icon. Several years ago when the biopic deal was initially signed, he told The Sun that Lady Gaga was not an option to portray his daughter on the big screen, simply saying “We have been approached many times” and going on to say “It wouldn’t be Lady Gaga. She doesn’t speak our kind of English”. Winehouse was clear on what aspects of his daughter he wanted to see on screen, saying “I wouldn’t mind betting it would be an unknown, young, English—London, cockney—actress who looks a bit like Amy. What we want is somebody to portray Amy in the way that she was… the funny, brilliant, charming, and horrible person that she was”.
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