Duncan Jones, Bowie's son, says the family won't be handing over the rights.
David Bowie performs in Los Angeles in 1973.
Bohemian Rhapsody seems to have unlocked something within Hollywood. In the weeks since the Queen biopic became a blockbuster hit and and five-time Oscar-nominated film, it feels like music movies have been green-lit with a special urgency. There's a forthcoming Céline Dion biopic, a Beatles movie based on unreleased footage from Let It Be, directed by Peter Jackson, and an upcoming Prince movie, based on his music. Then, there's the Elton John biopic, which was well in the works before Bohemian Rhapsody became a success—but now seems poised to soak up the residual benefits of being the Next Big Music Biopic.
Earlier this week, it was also announced that a David Bowie movie was on the way, starring Johnny Flynn (Lovesick, Clouds of Sils Maria) as the Thin White Duke himself. Titled Stardust, the film follows Bowie's first visit to America in 1971. It will be directed by Gabriel Range and will co-star Jena Malone and Marc Maron. However, the movie seems to have hit a pretty important hitch early on. According to Bowie's son, filmmaker Duncan Jones, Stardust won't have the rights to any of Bowie's music.
Jones revealed this on Thursday, writing on Twitter that "nobody has been granted music rights for ANY biopic... I would know." He continued, clarifying that he's not putting a stop to the movie. He's just saying that it will be a Bowie biopic without any Bowie music.
That will be a pretty big hurdle for Stardust, but not completely insurmountable. Plenty of films have been made about famous musicians without securing music rights. Take All Is by My Side, the Jimi Hendrix biopic starring André 3000, which didn't secure the rights to any of the guitar god's classics instead having 3000 do covers of other classic songs of the era. The young John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, only nabbed the rights to one song: "Mother," the 1970 song he released with Yoko Ono. The film Velvet Goldmine, Todd Haynes's take on a Bowie-like character in the glam 70s, might have had it even worse than Stardust; Bowie himself threatened to sue the director, forcing Haynes to go a different route and corral artists like Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood into writing original music for the soundtrack to evoke the feel of the era.
Meanwhile, it might be difficult for anyone to make a straightforward Bowie biopic at the moment. On Twitter, Jones said he would be all ears for something more unconventional—perhaps a Bowie-inspired animated project written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Peter Ramsey (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse).
Gaiman responded to the idea, telling Jones, "You are the best. Thank you." Ramsey took a more aw-shucks approach: "I'm...wait — wha?!? What universe have I stumbled into?" he replied.