Two many years after Amy Winehouse started her ascent to music stardom, a film based mostly on her life is making its technique to the massive display screen.
Last week, Focus Features launched a photograph of Marisa Abela as Winehouse in “Back to Black,” directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. In the picture, the actor sports activities Winehouse’s iconic beehive hairdo, arm tattoos and mole.
According to press notes, “Back to Black” is a biopic that “crashes through the looking glass of celebrity” to amplify the late singer-songwriter’s “extraordinary genius, creativity and honesty that infused everything she did.”
Abela, a British native, is finest recognized to U.S. audiences for her portrayal of Yasmin Kara-Hanani in HBO’s “Industry.” She’s set to seem alongside Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” due out this summer season.
A launch date for “Back to Black” has not but been introduced.
Courtesy of Focus Features
Winehouse was simply 20 years outdated when she launched “Frank,” her acclaimed 2003 debut album. She catapulted to world fame three years later, following the discharge of her second album, “Back to Black.” The album featured the ever-present smash “Rehab” and gained 5 Grammy Awards.
Despite Winehouse’s simple expertise, her experiences with drug and alcohol habit made her the topic of intense media scrutiny throughout her lifetime. She died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27.
Having made her directorial debut with the 2010 John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy,” Taylor-Johnson stated she grew to become a Winehouse fan whereas dwelling in London’s Camden district, the place the musician herself lived. She and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh secured the help of Winehouse’s household and property earlier than becoming a member of the undertaking.
“I feel excited and humbled to have this opportunity to realize Amy’s beautifully unique and tragic story to cinema accompanied by the most important part of her legacy ― her music,” she stated in a press launch.
Gareth Cattermole/BFC by way of Getty Images
Just how “Back to Black” will fare in portraying Winehouse’s personal life stays to be seen. Previous superstar biopics, like final 12 months’s “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” have too typically didn’t shed a satisfying degree of behind-the-scenes perception into their era-defining topics.
Taylor-Johnson, nevertheless, believes “Back to Black” will reclaim the real-life girl behind the music icon who endeared herself to a technology of followers.
”I’ll create a film that we’ll all love and cherish perpetually,” she stated. “Just like we do Amy.”
