Shaun Ryder biopic ‘Twisting My Melon’ held up by creative dispute

Shaun Ryder’s biopic Twisting My Melon has been halted due to creative disputes.

In 2013, ITV announced it was planning to serialise the Happy Mondays frontman’s autobiography Twisting My Melon. Eventually, Jack O’Connell (Skins) was announced as the lead actor in 2019.

The film is written by Matt Greenhalgh, who also wrote the script for the Ian Curtis biopic Control, John Lennon‘s origin story Nowhere Boy, and Amy Winehouse‘s Back to Black.

Greenhalgh was set to direct the movie as well, however a creative disagreement with the film’s American funders has stalled progressed on the film. In the latest edition of Classic Pop (via Music News), Ryder said: “Matt Greenhalgh wrote the script and was gonna direct.

“So we got the money, half-English, half-American and Matt fell out with the Americans. They didn’t want to make the film that Matt wanted to make. They wanted to make a film like all those other biopics, so it had to have a certain bit of this and a certain bit of that. So the American money went and it all went (messed) up really.

“Matt’s still working on getting it made, so that’s where he is now,” he continued. “At the moment, he’s just looking for another lot of backers.”

Filming was scheduled to start in Manchester in 2020. Other actors speculated to participate include Jason Isaacs, who would play Ryder’s father, Maxine Peake, who would act as his mother Linda, and Holliday Grainger as Shaun’s girlfriend.

Christian Bale has previously spoken of his love for Ryder, even admitting he’s the musician he’d love to play the most in a movie.

“He was always such an interesting figure,” he told NME. “I grew up loving the Happy Mondays, so yeah, it’d be a lot of fun to play.”

In other news, Ryder has confessed he’d be “dead” if he hadn’t “blown” his chance at Hollywood fame. 

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