Flood of Rock Star Bio-Pics Coming to Screen

Hollywood Reporter runs them down:  Jimi, Marvin, Jeff and Tim Buckley, Joplin,  Nina Simone, plus the CBGB epic, many more.  But also a look at how difficult it is to get them made, especially if artist is still live, and the problem of "life rights."

"Biopic! It sounds like something you'd see on a slide in a class you'd be better off skipping," sneers Daniel Algrant, director of Greetings From Tim Buckley, which stars Penn Badgley as Jeff Buckley, the musician who came to fame at a memorial concert for the famous father he never knew. "Biopics like Bird or Ray just become so predictable. People want to see what they don't expect, something that's hard to do and true." Algrant says his film, coming in May from Tribeca/Focus World, is no biopic but an innovative narrative duel between father and son (a structure that, coincidentally or not, resembles that of the 2001 book by David Browne that popularized the Buckleys' story, Dream Brother).