Biopic finally happening.
Deadline reports that director Jake Scott has been tapped to direct an untitled film about Jeff Buckley, the rising star musician who died tragically at age 30 in 1997.
Ryan Jaffe (‘The Rocker’) provides the movie’s script, with Michelle Sy (‘Finding Neverland’) and Orian Williams (‘Control’) set to produce. Mary Guibert, Buckley’s mother, will serve as executive producer on the project.
Jeff Buckley was the son of folk musician Tim Buckley. Having gained a following in the early 1990s for playing cover songs in small clubs and cafes in New York City, he began to focus more on his own material.. After turning down record labels and his father’s manager Herb Cohen, he signed with Columbia, recruited a band, and recorded what would be his only studio album, ‘Grace.’ The musician was in er, with Memphis, Tennessee working on his follow-up ‘Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk’ when he died tragically. Buckley, while awaiting his band’s arrival from New York, swam fully clothed, in Tennessee’s Wolf River, singing the chorus of his favourite song, ‘Whole Lotta Love’ by Led Zeppelin, when he was caught in the wake of a passing boat and drowned.
Music rights to Buckley’s songs are part of the rights package and the producers have also optioned the David Browne book ‘Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and Tim Buckley,’ as a resource.
Jake Scott is the son of Ridley Scott, and has previously directed 1999s ‘Plunkett & Macleane’ and most recently ‘Welcome to the Rileys’ with James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart. The director has a background in music videos, having directed videos for U2 (‘Staring At the Sun’), Radiohead (‘Fake Plastic Trees’), Cypress Hill (‘Insane in the Brain’) and R.E.M (‘Everybody Hurts’) among others.