In 2015, Asif Kapadia released his Oscar-winning documentary AMY, which delivered an unflinching portrayal of Amy Winehouse’s turbulent life and exceptional talent. Since then, her father Mitch – who described Kapadia’s film as “misleading” – has announced not one, but two biopics, backed a hologram tour (which was later put “on hold”), and proposed an Amy Winehouse musical. Two other documentaries – Back to Black and the BBC’s Reclaiming Amy – have also delved into the late singer’s life.
Now, there’s another posthumous project: a biopic film based on Daphne Barak’s 2010 book Saving Amy. The book itself is based on six months of photos and footage, filmed with Winehouse and her family over the last three years of her life; it was released in January 2010, a year and a half before Winehouse’s death on July 23, 2011 at the age of 27.
“Our team is honoured to be working on this project,” said David Ellender, the CEO of Halcyon Studios, which is producing the biopic. “Although her career was cut far too short, Amy was the voice of a generation and we look forward to telling her story in the most poignant way possible.”
While these posthumous projects often have noble, celebratory aims, the sheer volume of content that’s been produced about someone who died only a decade ago is a little jarring, especially when you consider the media’s role in her death.
As journalist Daisy Jones wrote in a 2015 op-ed for Dazed: “While art has always been a business, and arguably needs to be in order to sustain itself, it’s hard to shake the fact that people are capitalising off Amy Winehouse in the same way they always have done, even after her death. Surely nobody needs to tell her story, because she already did it so beautifully herself.”
There’s no more details about the new biopic as of yet, aside from the fact that Barak will executive produce. In the meantime, you can watch the trailer for Kapadia’s 2015 AMY documentary below.
