There’s been quite a bit of buzz about how Taylor Swift is now turning to directing. The push is to turn Swift into a legitimate filmmaker.
In December 2022, Swift had announced her Disney-backed Searchlight-produced directorial debut with an original script, written by her. How serious is this? Very serious.
Sources are now telling TheInSneider that Alice Birch — the acclaimed playwright and screenwriter behind “Lady Macbeth,” and Prime Video’s “Dead Ringers” — has been brought in to give Swift’s script a rewrite. In Hollywood, that’s not unusual. Scripts often pass through multiple writers, and Birch is working directly with Swift to shape the material without losing the singer’s creative voice.
The Taylor-Swift-is-a-good-director buzz has been carefully curated via industry players like cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who called Swift an “excellent director.” “Deadpool 3” filmmaker Shawn Levy banged the drums for her as well, comparing the singer to none other than Steven Spielberg.
Some probably don’t know this, but Swift has directed 18 music videos so far in her career. Whether that’ll translate into a successful filmmaking career is a whole other story. The part that initially worried me most was that she had written the screenplay, which I had heard was “rough.” Well, with Birch now firmly helping out, that might not be as much of a problem.
Here’s what I wrote well over a year ago about my concerns regarding Swift’s screenwriting:
Maybe Swift can hire a ghost writer, or a Paul Thomas Anderson, to clean up her screenplay, but you can definitely expect a team of talented people will make sure that her directorial debut does not turn out to be a disaster.
Swift’s directorial debut doesn’t have a production start date yet — but with Birch on board, the project finally feels like it’s edging closer to reality.