Deadline’s Learn the Screenplay collection spotlighting the scripts fueling the 12 months’s most talked-about motion pictures continues with Higher Man, Paramount’s musical biopic based mostly on the true story of the meteoric rise, dramatic fall and resurgence of British pop celebrity Robbie Williams. The script was penned by Simon Gleeson, Oliver Cole and Michael Gracey.
Gracey directs the uniquely private movie about Williams, capturing his wit, resilience, and extraordinary journey. From boyband stardom with Take That to a record-shattering solo profession, the movie explores the highs and lows of his success. And solely Williams may get away with telling his life story by way of the distinctive lens of a chimpanzee, a really surprising perspective that distinguishes this biopic from others.
Gracey explains the inspiration for portraying Williams as a monkey got here from Robbie himself.
“Rob would say issues like, ‘I’m up the again dancing like a monkey,’ or ‘I used to be fully out of it, however they had been dragging me up on stage to carry out like a monkey.’ And after some time, I believed, ‘Wouldn’t it’s superb to signify Rob as a monkey within the movie?’ As a result of Robbie is telling this story – simply as he was telling me the story in these interviews – and that’s how he sees himself.”
Higher Man, which world premiered at this 12 months’s Telluride Movie Pageant, hits choose theaters on December 25 earlier than Paramount sends it out large January 10. The pic has already landed a Critics Alternative nomination for its VFX, and the music “Forbidden Highway” landed a Golden Globe nomination (although it was disqualified from Oscar Unique Track consideration after it had made the shortlist).
Having shaped a friendship with Williams in the course of the growth of The Best Showman, Gracey admired Williams’ fascinating and witty storytelling. Gracey recorded their conversations over 18 months, forming the muse of what grew to become the musical biopic of his life.
In 2019, Gracey teamed with longtime pals and inventive collaborators Cole and Gleeson to write down the script, and collectively they developed the themes and expanded the movie’s story beats and key musical numbers. However the script by no means strayed too removed from its basis in these preliminary voice recordings. “We mentioned the recordings and picked out our favourite moments within the tales Rob was telling,” recollects Cole. “Michael then requested us to return to Sydney for 11 days and nights, and we wrote continually. Initially, it was a little bit of a whirlwind course of, nevertheless it was refreshing to work creatively underneath that stress.”
Because the trio of co-writers developed the undertaking, it shortly grew to become clear that these early recordings must be utilized within the last movie. “Nearly all of the time you hear Rob within the movie it’s from these unique recordings as a result of even after we tried to re-create them, we couldn’t,” Gracey says. “There’s a sure supply and conversational method by which Rob talks in these recordings, which is totally different to somebody being given a script and studying strains.”
RELATED DEADLINE VIDEO:
At its core the movie explores household, specializing in Williams’ relationships together with his entertainer father Peter Williams (stage identify Peter Conway, performed by Steve Pemberton); his mom, Janet (Kate Mulvany); and his grandmother, Betty (Alison Steadman). The attract of showbiz proved too robust for Williams’ father, main him to go away the household.
“In all of Rob’s tales, I used to be drawn to the father-son side of it,” says Gracey. “Somebody as soon as mentioned that every one rock stars are sons on stage crying out for his or her dads. However in Rob’s case, he had a novel expertise in that he had a father who idolized Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., and his pleasure and fervour for that music was handed on to Robbie. Narratively, there was one thing lovely a couple of father who doesn’t get to understand his dream, however his son does. And in Rob realizing his dream, he allowed his father to face on stage in entrance of hundreds of individuals and carry out. It’s a really satisfying, distinctive and true factor to Rob’s story.”
Try their script under.
