Cameron Crowe Offers Update on Joni Mitchell Biopic

In 2023, Cameron Crowe announced he would direct a Joni Mitchell biopic. Over a year later, he’s offered an update on the film:

“I’m super-excited. We’re going to start in by the end of this year and hopefully have it done for Christmas next year,” he recently told UCR. “You know, similarly to Heartbreakers Beach Party [the recently re-released Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers film, originally directed by Crowe in 1983], it’s Joni’s life, not through anybody else’s prism. It’s through her prism. It’s the characters who impacted her life that you know and a lot that you don’t know. And the music is so cinematic.”

Crowe explained that he and his production team have been working diligently to get the details right before filming.

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“I found a lot of the people from her early life, a lot of them are still alive,” he explained. “We’ve talked to them and what it was like to know Joni back then, as opposed to now. She’s the same girl from Saskatoon, you know? She’s got a lot of will and grit. It’s a life with a tale worth telling, filled with great music — and I get out of the way, just like Heartbreakers Beach Party. [Laughs].”

Who Will Play Joni Mitchell?

Details on casting remain to be seen. In July of 2023, it was rumored that Meryl Streep was being eyed to play the older version of Mitchell. Streep recently appeared on stage at one of Mitchell’s concerts in Los Angeles, singing alongside Elton John.

“I don’t know how you do what you do, I just know I need it like food,” Streep said in a 2022 video message, played at the MusiCares Person of the Year ceremony where Mitchell was the recipient. “Ever since we were both young girls. We didn’t know each other, but you sang me into being. You sang my life.”