Deadheads, assemble. Jonah Hill has been cast as counterculture musician Jerry Garcia in a Grateful Dead biopic to be directed by Martin Scorsese for Apple, Deadline reported on Thursday. The untitled film reunites the star and filmmaker seven years after The Wolf of Wall Street, which earned Hill his second Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
According to the outlet, members of the Grateful Dead (now touring as Dead & Company) and the group’s management team are involved with the film. Like other recent musical biopics, including Respect and Bohemian Rhapsody, Apple retains the rights to use the Grateful Dead’s musical catalogue in the movie. Hill and Scorsese will produce the project, along with Tixie Garcia, Garcia’s daughter.
It’s unclear which portion of Garcia and the Grateful Dead’s career will be centered in the film, written by American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson scribes Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. The Bay Area group rose to prominence in the ‘60s at the height of psychedelics. Garcia served as the band’s lead guitarist and vocalist, dying in 1995, just after the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Scorsese covered the group’s rise in his 2017 rock documentary, Long Strange Trip.
Hill and Scorsese each have major films on the immediate horizon as well. Hill stars in the buzzy Adam McKay satire Don’t Look Up alongside Jennifer Lawrence and Wolf of Wall Street alum Leonardo DiCaprio, out this December. Scorsese helms Killers of the Flower Moon, a western for Apple starring DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, set for a 2022 release date.
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