When I first started looking into the new developments on Joplin, I thought the news was that recent Tony Award winner Nina Arianda was replacing Amy Adams in THE Janis Joplin biopic, but it turns out Arianda is starring in A Janis Joplin biopic and Adams is still attached to another, different Joplin project.
Dueling Janises!
Which means that Amy Adams as Janis Joplin is still happening, as strange and incomprehensible as that is. Joplin, however, is pretty well ready to go, with a budget (sub-$20 million), a director (Martha Marcy May Marlene’s Sean Durkin), a start date penciled in for early 2013, and the trifecta of life rights, song rights and rights to a collection of Joplin’s letters and a biography. They’ve certainly got their ducks in a row on that one.
That leaves us with the two actresses. I wonder how much of a passion project this is for Adams? Because Joplin is actually happening in the near future and Adams’ Joplin project is still largely amorphous. Movies like this often get developed in triplicate (remember when everyone wanted a Jeff Buckley biopic?), but usually only one of them gets made. With a different project beating them into theaters, I wonder how hard Adams would work to keep her project alive.
But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. Which is more intriguing to you—the transformation Adams will have to go through for Janis, or the Broadway ingénue who could stun us all?
