Actress Marisa Abela of HBO show Industry stars as the late Amy Winehouse in upcoming music biopic Back to Black.
Upcoming Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black has unveiled a first look image of star Marisa Abela (HBO’s Industry) as the late music icon. The photo debuted on Friday (January 13), as film company Studiocanal announced a partnership with Focus Features and Monumental Pictures on the music drama. Sam Taylor-Johnson, known as the visionary behind 50 Shades of Grey and Nowhere Boy, is directing the film.
Last July, Variety reported that Abela emerged as a frontrunner to play Winehouse in the biopic. According to the studios, Back to Black will capture “Amy Winehouse’s vibrant years living in London in the early aughts and her intense journey to fame.”
“My connection to Amy began when I left college and was hanging out in the creatively diverse London borough of Camden,” Taylor-Johnson said in a statement. “I got a job at the legendary Koko Club, and I can still breathe every market stall, vintage shop and street. A few years later Amy wrote her searingly honest songs whilst living in Camden. Like with me, it became part of her DNA. I first saw her perform at a talent show at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho and it was immediately obvious she wasn’t just ’talent’ … she was genius.”
She added, “As a filmmaker you can’t really ask for more. 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.”
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Back to Black “will focus on Amy’s extraordinary genius, creativity and honesty that infused everything she did. A journey that took her from the craziness and color of 90’s Camden High Street to global adoration — and back again, Back to Black crashes through the looking glass of celebrity to watch this journey from behind the mirror, to see what Amy saw, to feel what she felt.”
Back to Black is written by Matt Greenhalgh, who last collaborated with Taylor-Johnson on the script for Nowhere Boy, a 2009 music biopic about the childhood of John Lennon.
