New Keith Moon biopic to reportedly begin shooting this summer

NME

The long-awaited biopic about The Who drummer Keith Moon is set to begin shooting this summer, according to reports.

Moon was the drummer for The Who between 1964 and 1978 when he died from an overdose of Heminevrin, a drug used to treat and prevent symptoms of alcohol withdrawal.

The new film project, which is provisionally called The Real Me after the ‘Quadrophenia’ song, will be executive produced by The Who’s Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend.

According to Variety, Paul Whittington (The Crown) is set to direct, while the script has been penned by British screenwriter Jeff Pope.

The production company behind George Harrison: Living in the Material World and Ron Howard’s Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years is helming the production of the project.

It’s still undetermined who will play Moon, although Daltrey has previously said the casting will need to be very specific – and will need to be based on the actor’s eyes.

“I’ve got to find a Keith Moon,” the star told BBC 6Music’s Matt Everitt back in 2018. “It’s going to be very, very dependent on the actor and the actor’s eyes. Because you’ve got to cast it completely from the eyes because Moon had extraordinary eyes.”

When the radio DJ suggested it might be hard to find an actor who could play a musician like Moon, Daltrey replied: “What makes you think Keith was a fucking musician? He would have said, ‘How dare you, my boy! A musician? I’m a fucking drummer!’

“They didn’t really know Keith,” he added. “I don’t know whether anybody outside the band really got to know him like we did. He was a strange bunch of people.”

The frontman also explained that he’d spent a long time searching for “the right screenplay”.

The film has now been in the works for over a decade.

Daltrey recently criticised The Rolling Stones, calling them “a mediocre pub band”.

In a new interview with the Coda Collection, Daltrey reflected on The Who’s history and was asked about their contemporaries, including the Stones and Led Zeppelin.

When discussing the Stones, Daltrey first took the opportunity to praise frontman Mick Jagger, saying: “You’ve got to take your hat off to him. He’s the number one rock ‘n’ roll performer.”

Going on to discuss the band’s musicianship, he added: “But as a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some night, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band!’”

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