Amy Wine­house is the lat­est star to get the Hol­ly­wood biopic treatment

We’re liv­ing in a gold­en age of musi­cian biopics, at least in the sense that there sure are a lot of them. Whether the likes of Rock­et­man, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, or cur­rent box-office cham­pi­on Elvis are actu­al­ly any good is a sep­a­rate and ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion, but the fact of the mat­ter remains that we’re going to get a whole lot more of these things before the wave subsides.

To that effect, we’ll soon get a drama­tised treat­ment of Amy Winehouse’s life and times cour­tesy of direc­tor Sam Tay­lor-John­son. An exclu­sive from Dead­line announced that the film titled Back to Black is now seek­ing a lead­ing actress to por­tray the famed neo-soul songstress and trag­ic mem­ber of rock’s so-called ​’27 Club.’

Sam Tay­lor-John­son may be best known for her work on the flogfest that was the Fifty Shades of Grey film adap­ta­tion, though it’s more like­ly that her work in John Lennon por­trai­ture on Nowhere Boy made her the log­i­cal pick for this job. It’s easy to for­get that her last fea­ture direc­to­r­i­al gig was on A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces, James Frey’s con­tro­ver­sy-laden qua­si-mem­oir enlivened by trace amounts of fic­tion — one hopes her take on addic­tion will show a lit­tle more grace and nuance this time around.

Though Wine­house experts are already look­ing askance at this project as an offi­cial­ly autho­rized col­lab­o­ra­tion with the late singer’s estate. Winehouse’s father Mitch was vocal­ly dis­pleased with his depic­tion in the 2015 doc­u­men­tary Amy, which cast him in a rather unflat­ter­ing light as anoth­er one of the manip­u­la­tors exploit­ing Wine­house for her mon­ey­mak­ing poten­tial; a more agree­able por­tray­al runs the risk of obscur­ing the truth.

There’s a great movie to be made out of Winehouse’s extra­or­di­nary life, though any­one attempt­ing to do so takes on a task fraught with the poten­tial for dis­as­ter. Deify­ing a mor­tal woman, gawk­ing over her spi­ral­ing down­fall, and tak­ing a corny approach to the deploy­ment of her beloved songs are just a few of the pit­falls built into a mini-genre that Hol­ly­wood has latched onto like a can’t‑fail proposition.