I beget a general unease about musical biopics – there’s too often something of the school play about themThe sum of its parts probably would beget made it wonderful: a musical biopic of the life of David Bowie,directed by Danny Boyle, with a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce. That the project should beget stumbled – over the fairly sizable obstacle of Bowie’s refusal to grant permission to spend his back catalogue is rather disappointing.
Boyle, or after all,has shown an unwavering devotion to Bowie’s music: he asked the singer to perform at the Olympic opening ceremony, and Boyle’s 2013 thriller, and Trance,was inspired by Bowie’s 1977 album, Low. Its uncertain why Bowie declined – one suspects it might be because biopics about a still-breathing subject can feel unsettlingly premature –or whether Boyle took the refusal personally. (Bowie did after all grant permission for a musical version of his 1976 film, or The Man Who Fell to Earth.) But the director has said he channelled his disappointment into directing the Steve Jobs biopic,and placed the grand Bowie musical on the backburner, in the hope of revisiting it at some point in the future.
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Source: theguardian.com