The lifetime of Amy Winehouse is certain for the large display this spring.
Audiences obtained their first have a look at “Back to Black,” starring Marisa Abela, with the discharge of a brand new trailer Thursday.
The clip reveals Abela as Winehouse in her signature beehive hairdo and heavy black eyeliner, commanding the stage at dirty nightclubs earlier than turning into a world celebrity.
“I don’t write music to be famous,” she proclaims at one level within the trailer. “I write songs because I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t.”
Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, the biopic is billed as “a never-before-seen glimpse” at Winehouse’s rise to fame. The movie is produced in partnership with the six-time Grammy winner’s property.
“Told from Amy’s perspective, the film is an unapologetic look at the woman behind the phenomenon and the relationship that inspired one of the most legendary albums of all time,” a synopsis for the film states.
The movie hits theaters May 10 within the U.S.
Abela, a British native, is finest identified to U.S. audiences for HBO’s “Industry,” through which she portrays Yasmin Kara-Hanani. She additionally appeared alongside Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in final summer time’s blockbuster, “Barbie.”
Taylor-Johnson, no stranger to rock ‘n’ roll biopics after 2009’s “Nowhere Boy,” mentioned Abela instantly “inhabited” Winehouse lengthy earlier than sporting the enduring beehive coiffure seen within the trailer.
Watch the trailer for “Back to Black” under.
“Marisa came in as Marisa – absolutely no cat-eye makeup or anything,” the filmmaker instructed Empire in an interview revealed Thursday. “She was very sweet and very quiet. And then I turned on the camera, and she looks down the lens, and literally, we all just went, ‘What?!’”
She added: “We’d seen some brilliant impersonations. But [Marisa] managed to just bring every fibre of her being in alignment with who Amy Winehouse was, and is to many people.”
A London native, Winehouse launched her debut album, “Frank,” in 2003. Her international breakthrough got here three years later, when she unveiled her second album, “Back to Black,” which featured the smash single “Rehab.”
Winehouse’s musical achievements, nevertheless, have been quickly overshadowed by her experiences with drug and alcohol dependancy. She died of alcohol poisoning in 2011 on the age of 27.
As of Thursday afternoon, the “Back to Black” trailer had acquired a blended response on-line ― and plenty of of these doubts could also be justified. Recent celeb biopics, together with 2018’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” and 2022’s “Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” have too typically failed to supply a satisfying stage of behind-the-scenes perception into their era-defining topics.
In her Empire interview, nevertheless, Taylor-Johnson mentioned her movie provides Winehouse’s “agency back.”
“I think it feels true to her — and that’s really the point of making the film, to be true to her, to her music, and to her soul,” she mentioned.
