Peter Sarsgaard will play iconic bluegrass musician Bill Monroe in a biopic of the artist to be helmed by Finn Taylor with “Thelma And Louise” scribe Callie Khouri rewriting an early draft of the script, according to TheWrap.
The reportedly low-budget, “Walk The Line”-type film is a passion project for self-described Monroe fan Sarsgaard who, upon coming aboard, approached Khouri to rewrite the script himself. It may also hint at a possible involvement of Khouri’s musician husband, iconic country music star T. Bone Burnett whose involvement with Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” — which costarred Sargaard’s partner, Maggie Gyllenhaal — won him a Best Original Song Oscar for “The Weary Kind.” It’s early days though with the project still only in the starting stages of developing into an independently-financed production.
The legendary Monroe pioneered bluegrass music with his band, Blue Grass Boys — from which the genre’s name itself is derived from — with a decorated career following spanning over 60 years with just under 20 studio albums and an endless number of singles. He passed away in 1996 but has already been immortalized with inductions into the Country Music Hall Of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame as well as receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993.
A slight worry for the project seems to be the involvement of writer-director Finn Taylor considering the mixed successes of his previous films, “The Darwin Awards” and “Cherish,” though with Khouri and Sarsgaard on board, hopefully they can conjure something interesting up.
Bill Monroe “On And On”
Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys “Midnight On The Stormy Deep”
