Two decades after Amy Winehouse began her ascent to music stardom, a movie based on her life is making its way to the big screen.
Last week, Focus Features released a photo of Marisa Abela as Winehouse in “Back to Black,” directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson. In the image, the actor sports Winehouse’s iconic beehive hairdo, arm tattoos and mole.
According to press notes, “Back to Black” is a biopic that “crashes through the looking glass of celebrity” to amplify the late singer-songwriter’s “extraordinary genius, creativity and honesty that infused everything she did.”
Abela, a British native, is best known to U.S. audiences for her portrayal of Yasmin Kara-Hanani in HBO’s “Industry.” She’s set to appear alongside Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” due out this summer.
A release date for “Back to Black” has not yet been announced.
Winehouse was just 20 years old when she released “Frank,” her acclaimed 2003 debut album. She catapulted to global fame three years later, following the release of her second album, “Back to Black.” The album featured the ubiquitous smash “Rehab” and won five Grammy Awards.
Despite Winehouse’s undeniable talent, her experiences with drug and alcohol addiction made her the subject of intense media scrutiny during her lifetime. She died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 at age 27.
Having made her directorial debut with the 2010 John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy,” Taylor-Johnson said she became a Winehouse fan while living in London’s Camden district, where the musician herself lived. She and screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh secured the support of Winehouse’s family and estate before joining the project.
“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,” she said in a press release.
Just how “Back to Black” will fare in portraying Winehouse’s private life remains to be seen. Previous celebrity biopics, like last year’s “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” have too often failed to shed a satisfying level of behind-the-scenes insight into their era-defining subjects.
Taylor-Johnson, however, believes “Back to Black” will reclaim the real-life woman behind the music icon who endeared herself to a generation of fans.
”I will create a movie that we will all love and cherish forever,” she said. “Just like we do Amy.”