Shailene Woodley Cast In New Janis Joplin Biopic
There’s never been a Janis Joplin biopic. There have been movies — like the 1979 Bette Midler vehicle The Rose, originally conceived as a Joplin movie before Joplin’s estate withheld rights to her music — that are inspired by Joplin’s life. Beyond The Rose, there have been plenty of attempts at a full-on Joplin biopic over the years. Earlier this year, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story about the many failed attempts. At various points, Melissa Etheridge, Brittany Murphy, Renée Zellweger, Zooey Deschanel, Pink, and most recently Amy Adams have all been attached to play Joplin — not to mention the 30 Rock plotline about Jenna Maroney playing an unlicensed Joplin clone named Jackie Jormp-Jomp. Now we’ve got a new cinematic Janis Joplin, and it’s Shailene Woodley.
Variety reports that Shailene Woodley, of The Fault In Our Stars and the Divergent series, will produce and star in a new Janis Joplin biopic, which is receiving $2.5 million from the tax-funded California Film Commission. We know that the film plans to shoot for 30 days and that it’s got a $10 million budget for “qualified expenditures,” but that’s pretty much all we’ve got. In a press release, Woodley says, “California meant so much to Janis Joplin — from the stoops of San Francisco to the wooden walls of Sunset Sound, the state became the stage upon which she explored not just the world of music, but the world of her vibrant humanity.”
Shailene Woodley is 32 years old — five years older than Joplin at the time of her death. I have no idea whether she can sing, and we don’t yet know anything about the new movie’s director, screenwriter, title, or the rest of its cast. Fingers crossed that Kris Kristofferson gets to play himself.