Marisa Abela’s hair is huge in the first look at Amy Winehouse biopic Back To Black

Following the previous report that Marisa Abela was the frontrunner to play Amy Winehouse in a new biopic, Focus Features has confirmed the Industry actor’s casting and shared a first look at Back To Black before the film goes into production next week. Naturally, this includes the British singer’s signature beehive hairstyle, tattoos, and Monroe piercing, though it’s hard to get a good look at just how much eyeliner is involved.

Back To Black is being made in full cooperation with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Publishing, and the late artist’s estate, so there’s no Jackie Jormp-Jomp situation here. The project is set to include a number of Winehouse’s hits that made her one of the definitive voices of the ’00s, presumably with Abela performing them.

“My connection to Amy began when I left college and was hanging out in the creatively diverse London borough of Camden,” director Sam Taylor-Johnson writes in a press release. “I got a job at the legendary KOKO CLUB, and I can still breathe every market stall, vintage shop and street…A few years later Amy wrote her searingly honest songs whilst living in Camden. Like with me, it became part of her DNA. I first saw her perform at a talent show at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho and it was immediately obvious she wasn’t just ’talent’…she was genius. As a filmmaker you can’t really ask for more. I feel excited and humbled to have this opportunity to realise Amy’s beautifully unique and tragic story to cinema accompanied by the most important part of her legacy—her music. I am fully aware of the responsibility, with my writing collaborator—Matt Greenhalgh—I will create a movie that we will all love and cherish forever. Just like we do Amy.”

While Taylor-Johnson is now best known for making Fifty Shades Of Grey, she is no stranger to music biopics, having previously directed Nowhere Boy. The 2009 film starred her now-husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson and depicted John Lennon during the troubled schoolboy years that led to the inception of the Beatles.