Meryl Streep plays Joni Mitchell in new biopic | film

Meryl Streep will play Joni Mitchell in a biopic of the singer-songwriter directed by Cameron Crowe, according to record executive Clive Davis.

Davis confirmed the rumors surrounding the casting at his pre-Grammy Awards party on Saturday, Rolling Stone reports. Last year, Anya Taylor-Joy was attached to the project in the role of the younger Mitchell, as was the case with Streep in Mamma Mia! Co-star Amanda Seyfried.

Crowe, whose best-known film is the musical drama Almost Famous, has been attached to the project for several years, and in 2023 said he hoped it would be released before 2026. Speaking three years ago, Crowe explained that – unlike recent films based on short periods of the lives of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen – the film is not based on a biopic about the star, but rather on Mitchell’s own account of her life.

“It’s Johnny’s life, no [seen] “Through everyone else’s perspective,” he said. “It’s through her perspective. It’s the people who have influenced her life that she knows and a lot that she doesn’t know. And the music is very cinematic.”

Streep has previously received two Academy Award nominations for playing real-life musicians: violinist Roberta Guaspari in the 1999 film Music of the Heart and the titular character in the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins, about the life of the amateur singer.