Jonah Hill Will Play Jerry Garcia In Martin Scorsese’s Grateful Dead Biopic
Jonah Hill is clearly not satisfied with hearing the words “two-time Oscar nominee,” and wants to increase the number to three, or even “Oscar-winner Jonah Hill“, because Deadline has announced that he will be playing the late psychedelic jam band legend Jerry Garcia in a biopic directed by Martin Scorsese for Apple. Of course, the ice cream-gobbling maniac in me got way too excited about this project until I realized with great disappointment it wasn’t a movie about Cherry Garcia. But this is good too, I guess.
Martin Scorsese’s latest project with Apple is a biopic about the Grateful Dead, which makes total sense if you’ve ever listened to a soundtrack that was supervised by Martin Scorsese (the man loves classic rock almost as much as he hates superhero movies). Scorsese currently has a deal with Apple, despite not being the biggest fan of the at-home film experience. After the Apple-produced Killers of the Flower Moon, they’ll all begin working on the Grateful Dead project, which will reportedly be written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson. The Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann will serve as executive producers, along with Jerry Garcia’s daughter Trixie Garcia. Sources tell Deadline that because the remaining members of the Grateful Dead are participating in the production, Apple will have total access to the band’s music catalog for use in the film. That’s good because it would suck to hear Apple attempt to pass off a legally-acceptable sound-alike version of “Casey Jones” called “Corey James.”
This would be the second Grateful Dead project that Martin Scorsese has worked on (he produced the 2017 documentary Long Strange Trip). This will also be the second time Martin Scorsese has worked with Jonah Hill. He previously directed him in the 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street. This also marks the fifth time Jonah Hill has played a real person in a movie (the other times were Moneyball, TWOWS, True Story, and War Dogs).
Jonah confirmed the news on Instagram:
So far this is the only casting news we have about this project, and hopefully, there’s an update on that soon. Because what I really want to know is who Martin Scorsese plans on casting as the second greatest star of Grateful Dead lore, and that’s the five dancing bears! I assume they’ll play a significant role in this very serious Oscar-worthy picture. All I know is that those bears never stop smiling with every muscle they’ve got, so it’s got to be five actors who haven’t completely frozen their face with Botox. Hmmm…this could be tricky.
Pic: Instagram