STUDIO BOSSES THOUGHT DURY BIOPIC WAS FICTION
The director of IAN DURY biopic SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL struggled to fi nd backers for his film in America - because no one had heard of the Brit ish punk icon.
Mat Whitecross screened a copy of the film, in which Lord of the Rings star Andy Serkis portrays the late Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick singer, for Hollywood executives at the Sundance film festival in Utah in January (10) - and he was stunned when they presumed Dury was a fictional charac ter.
Now premiering the much-anticipated biopic at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Whitecross tells WENN, "I met with some people who’d seen t he film, and I didn’t really understand the gist of the conversation. The ir questions didn’t make any sense.
"They kept asking me, ‘Who wrote the music?’ After a while I realised, ‘They don’t know it’s a real person’." But Whitecross is still confident the subject matter will appeal to mov ie fans, even if they’ve never heard of Dury, adding, "It didn’t matter t o them (the movie bosses) that they’d never heard of Ian. They found the story engaging."
Movie & Entertainment News provided by World Entertainment News Network (www.wenn.com)
