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Jonah Hill Cast As Jerry Garcia In Martin Scorsese's Grateful Dead Movie
Jonah Hill has been cast as the Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia in a Martin Scorsese-directed biopic. The legendary director is known for highly-influential films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas, though more recently, he's delivered some modern masterpieces like Gangs of New York, The Departed, and The Wolf of Wall Street. His last film, The Irishman, was seemingly a farewell to the gangster genre, which many consider to be the director's bread and butter.
Scorsese's next film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which stars his two most frequent collaborators in Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, is expected to release on Apple TV+ sometime early next year. The film also stars Brendan Fraser and Jesse Plemons and is based on David Grann's bestselling, true-crime novel of the same name, which chronicles the mysterious murders of the members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma that became known as the Reign of Terror. Now, for his project after that, Scorsese will be staying with the streaming service.
Deadline reports that Hill has been cast in the lead role in Scorsese's biopic about the legendary rock band. Scorsese and Hill are also on board to produce the film, which is currently in development from the screenwriting duo Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, fresh off their work on the FX series American Crime Story: Impeachment. Like Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese's untitled biopic is expected to release on Apple TV+.
The news that the legendary director is making a biopic about Grateful Dead will surely be exciting for fans of Scorsese and Deadheads alike. The filmmaker's reverence for the band is well known, considering he produced the 2017 Grateful Dead documentary Long Strange Trip, and while he has been involved in several music documentaries throughout his career, this marks the first time he will tackle the subject in fiction. It's unclear what events the film will cover, though there is plenty of ripe backstory to explore, from the band's formation in the Bay Area to their rise to popularity against the backdrop of 1960s psychedelic counterculture.
The biopic will also reunite Scorsese and Hill, who previously collaborated on the 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street, which earned Hill his second Oscar nod for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Since then, the two talents have been actively searching for another project to work on together, and while a lot can happen before a film enters production, it seems they've finally found it. Although this time, Hill will get the chance to flex his leading-man talent by embodying a rock legend like Garcia.
