The legacy of David Bowie will be celebrated in the near future, with the reveal of a still-untitled but fast-approaching documentary from director Brett Morgen, the man behind such biographical docs as Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and Jane. According to Variety, the film will be based off “thousands of hours of rare performance footage” from Bowie, and could premiere as soon as January at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival.
The key to the film, which Morgen has been working on in secret for as long as four years, is the depth of rare and largely unseen footage with which the director has been working. A source for Variety described the project as “neither documentary nor biography, but an immersive cinematic experience built, in part, upon thousands of hours of never before seen material.” Reportedly, live concert footage is a large part of that material, which may give the finished movie the air of a concert film as much as anything else. Fitting, Morgen is said to be eyeing an IMAX release, as the big audience of David Bowie fans would no doubt love to see the rock icon in an extended IMAX presentation with the best possible picture and sound.
Morgen, the director of everything from The Kid Stays in the Picture to the 30 for 30 entry June 17th, 1994, had a great deal of control over the project, also editing, writing and producing the project. The Oscar-winning sound team of Bohemian Rhapsody will also be working on the film, which notably has received at least some degree of cooperation from the Bowie estate. Bowie’s widow, the model Iman, had made statements in the past stating that the family was against a traditional biopic route of the singer’s life, ‘ala Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman, but they were presumably less opposed to Morgen’s music-centric vision for the project.
We would expect to hear more concrete details about this project, including a working title, in the near future. This January, meanwhile, will be the sixth anniversary of Bowie’s passing in 2016.
