Andrew Haigh impressed many with the great gay-themed movie Weekend, and he was also one of the main cretive forces behind HBO’s Looking. More recently he’s shown his talent doesn’t just extend to gay themes with the award-winning 45 Years. Now he’s planning to go back to a subject with a gay dimension, which may also end up being his most commercial film yet.
Deadline reports he’s signed up to direct a biopic of Alexander McQueen, which producer Damian Jones and Pathe have been putting together, and which will be partially based on Andrew Wilson’s McQueen biography, Blood Beneath The Skin. The Rolling Stone playwright, Chris Urch, is onboard to write the script.
McQueen had a meteoric rise as a fashion designer, becoming renowned as one of the best in Britain by his early 20s, with his immaculate tailoring shocking, surprising and delighting fashion watchers in equal measure. He became one of the go-to designers for the hip and trendy, making outfits for David Bowie tours and working with Bjork (including directing the video for Alarm Call). He was appointed the head designer for Givenchy before launching his own successful label.
However, he also had issues with drug dependence and depression, and while he was openly gay (he said he knew he was gay when he was six and came out in his teens) he struggled to maintain relationships. He tragically committed suicide when he was just 40 years old, only days after his mother died of cancer.
It’s certainly fertile ground for a biopic, and Haigh would seem the perfect man to deal with it. It’s still early days though, so it’s not clear when we might see the movie.
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