Scorsese Finds His Jerry Garcia

Meet your "Jerry Garcia": Jonah Hill will play the musician in Martin Scorsese's upcoming Grateful Dead film, which he's making for Apple. The band and its management are involved in the untitled biopic, and Apple has rights to the Grateful Dead catalog for the movie's soundtrack, Deadline reports. While this is Scorsese's first music biopic, he's no stranger to music documentaries, including 2017's Long Strange Trip, which was about the Grateful Dead. As for the director and Hill, they've been wanting to work together again since 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, sources say.

Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson, Ed Wood, and Dolemite Is My Name, are writing the screenplay, Variety reports. It's not yet clear what years or events the film will cover. Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann of the Grateful Dead will executive produce, as will Garcia's daughter Trixie Garcia, band manager Bernie Cahill, and Eric Eisner, who was one of the producers on Long Strange Trip. Scorsese and Hill will also serve as producers. The infamous "jam band" formed in California's Bay Area in 1965 and released its debut album in 1967; members continued to play on after the death of frontman Garcia in 1995. (More Jonah Hill stories.)