After helping Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto to Oscar success with Dallas Buyers Club, director Jean-Marc Vallee is back in gong season with this year’s Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon. And he’s already looking ahead to more potential awards bait, entering negotiations to direct the long-developing Janis Joplin biopic with Amy Adams in the lead{
Joplin’s storied life and music career has been a fascination for filmmakers for years: at one point there were competing projects warbling their way through development. And in its time, the Joplin biopic has attracted the likes of Lee Daniels, Catherine Hardwicke and Fernando Meirelles, with Renée Zellweger seriously interested in the lead.
Adams, of course, has the singing ability and has proven her acting chops, so she seems like a good fit. And this current iteration of the project boasts the potential for a reunion of the Dallas Buyers Club creative team, with that film’s writers, Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, in negotiations to take fresh pass at the script, which originated with producers Ron Terry and Teresa Kounin-Terry.
Vallée has already been busy, shooting the drama Demolition with Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts, which will be out next year, and the director is likely to tackle the Joplin film in the second half of 2015.