Amy Winehouse’s beehive hairdo can be installed on just about any female actress and you’ll get Winehouse’s eccentric persona. However, there’s something very … off about Abela donning it.
I’m utterly convinced that I could have probably put on that beehive wig and looked more like Winehouse. At the very least, I hope Marisa Abela does a good job of getting to the late singer’s oozing spirit in this upcoming biopic.
All of this to say that Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” has completed production in the UK.
On 12.14.22 I had the scoop that “Back to Black,” was going to start production in January. The trades caught up a month later.
We do now know that “Industry” actress Marisa Abela is playing Winehouse. European studio Studiocanal is backing the film, which has been a passion project for Taylor-Johnson, who was a close friend of Winehouse’s.
“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.
Let’s just forget that Taylor-Johnson also directed 2015’s critically-maligned “Fifty Shades of Grey.” She has more or less disowned that film, citing the creative difficulties she had working with the novel’s author E. L. James.
Now Johnson has around five months to edit her film for a possible TIFF world premiere. If not, a BFI London Film Festival bow is inevitable.
Having an insurance director is not uncommon in Hollywood. Aging filmmakers, in case a health issue arises, sometimes need to have one. It seems like that’s what might have occurred on “What Happens at Night.”