The long-mooted biopic of musician and former Beach Boy Brian Wilson is finally taking shape, with reports emerging that There Will Be Blood actor Paul Dano has been cast as Wilson in the early part of his career.
The project, currently titled Love and Mercy, is set to range widely over Wilson's life and work, which began with a blaze of glory in the 60s with surfer-pop act the Beach Boys, before the cancellation of the Smile album in 1967 and Wilson's subsequent battles with mental illness and drug addiction. Wilson finally debuted Smile in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2004, which presaged a fully fledged career revival.
The movie was first announced a year ago by producer-director Bill Pohlad, whose most recent project was the Terrence Malick-directed The Tree of Life. Pohlad will direct Love and Mercy from a script by Oren Moverman, who wrote the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There. British musician Atticus Ross, who worked with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor on the soundtrack for The Social Network, is being lined up for the film's "soundscape" – a vital component, given Wilson's reputation for musical and technical innovation.
There is no word yet as to whether Love and Mercy will be quite so uncoventional as I'm Not There, but the suggestion is that the movie will look "at the seminal moments in Wilson's life, his art, his struggles and the love that kept him going". Pohlad has secured rights to the story of Wilson's wife Melinda, as well as that of Wilson himself. Dano, who recently played a musician in Sundance hit For Ellen, as well as an assassin in the sci-fi thriller Looper, will play Wilson as a young man; the older version is yet to be cast.
