Australian singer-songwriter Sia is take the director’s chair for her first film, she has revealed in the Hollywood Reporter.
The sometime Zero 7 vocalist was inspired to make the move after taking charge of the cameras on the acclaimed video for Chandelier, her 2014 single, nominated in December for a Grammy for best music video. The film will once again feature 12-year-old dancer Maddie Ziegler, who played a young version of Sia in the promo.
“I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I wanted to make a movie, because I thought it would be seen as a vanity project, because I was a singer,” said Sia, 39. “And then last year after I made the Chandelier video, I realised that I was pretty good at directing, so I felt a little bit braver.”
The singer-songwriter said she had worked on the screenplay with the children’s author Dallas Clayton, as she does not enjoy the process of finalising a script.
“For me, the process was I work out the movie: I’ll act it out, I’ll have the dialogue already in my head,” said Sia, also known by her full name Sia Furler. “It’s really the formatting … I can’t be bothered to learn [screenwriting software] Final Draft. I’m not a technical person. Like, when I sing, I just want to sing the melody and write the lyrics. I don’t want to have to do production, which is very technical. I don’t enjoy that.”
Sia, who in March was named songwriter of the year for the third year in a row at the Australasian Performing Right Association awards, did not reveal when the movie might see the light of day.
