David Bowie Estate Approves New Film

Moonage Daydream is a new film about David Bowie and is the first to be approved by the late singer’s estate.

Directed by Brett Morgen, it is a co-production between BMG and Live Nation Productions, who are the executive producers and financiers of the film.

It will hinge around Bowie’s music between 1970, when he was still struggling for international recognition, and 1977, by which point he had released the landmark Low and “Heroes” albums in the same year and was a global superstar.

Morgen, who previously produced the Montage Of Heck documentary about Kurt Cobain in 2015, has spent the past four years on the Bowie project and was given access to “thousands of hours of archival performance footage” of the singer, much of which has never been seen by the public before.

“The feature-length experiential cinematic odyssey that explores Bowie’s creative, musical and spiritual journey,” is how it is being described. “Told through sublime, kaleidoscopic, never-before-seen footage, performances, and music, the film is guided by Bowie’s narration and is the first film to be officially sanctioned by Bowie’s estate.”

It is expected to cover the totality of Bowie’s creative endeavours – his music, of course, but also his work in film, theatre, dance, audio and video collages, sculpture, painting and more.

The Bowie archive has been meticulously maintained over the years. Before his death, there was the David Bowie Is… touring exhibition. There has also been a long-running series of expansive album reissues, featuring enormous amounts of previously unheard music, started when he was still alive and which rolls on today.

The fact the estate is fully involved is significant and will give it a depth and reach that were denied to other projects, notably 2020’s Stardust biopic. That told the story of Bowie’s first trip to the US where he formed many of the ideas that fed into The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars. The Bowie estate, however, refused to give permission for any of this songs or recordings to be used in the film.

This has been an issue that scuppered many other films about deceased artists. The Jimi Hendrix estate, for example, has repeatedly refused to license any of his music for films they are not involved in. It is a similar situation with the Jeff Buckley estate, but it has approved the imminent Everybody Here Wants You biopic which will include his music.

Having the estate involved in a documentary or biopic means that access to the archives and the music is a simple and straightforward process; but there is the risk that officially sanctioned productions become bland, saccharine or toothless.

Creating a film without the involvement of everyone (or their estates) can cause enormous legal problems, as the case of Pistol (the forthcoming TV drama series based on the memoirs of Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones) proves. John Lydon originally tried to block the band’s music being used but lost the case in the High Court in London.

In contrast, a new documentary about the KLF does not have the involvement of the two members of the group, but they have given Chris Atkins, the director, their blessing, understanding that the narrative around the KLF does not have to be directly controlled by the KLF.

Such disputes over projects, or such tactical distancing from them, will long continue as more films about more musicians are planned.

Given the access to the archives that Moonage Daydream has, and the incredible scope of these archives, this should elevate it over and above many of the mawkish films that have only happened because the artist or their estate allowed them to.