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Meat is…: Jessica Brown Findlay Takes a Bow on Mark Gill’s “Morrissey”

While they’ve got The Smiths frontman in actor Jack Lowden (’71) and it becomes only a matter of time before the production to announce who’ll play the guitar playing Johnny Marr, Deadline reports that Downtown Abbey starlet Jessica Brown Findlay will take on the role of Linder Sterling in Mark Gill’s biopic debut, Morrissey. Sterling is a visual artist, performance artist and musician from Liverpool, who became a close friend of Morrissey. Production begins this month. Orian Williams and Gill’s Voorman Problem partner Baldwin Li are producing.

Gist: Written by William Thacker and Gill, this is a portrait of Morrissey’s early life prior to forming a legendary songwriting partnership with Johnny Marr. Findlay stars opposite Jack Lowden in the lead role, which follows the character from his early life in the 1970s before he went on to become the lead singer in seminal 1980s band The Smiths.

Worth Noting: From Wiki: Ludus was a British post-punk band formed in Manchester in 1978 which featured artist, designer and singer Linder Sterling. It played jazz-, avant-garde- and punk- oriented material. The band influenced singer Morrissey, later of The Smiths and a solo artist, who remains one of the group’s most vocal fans.

Do We Care?: Fans of The Smiths and generally not big on the biopic format, we’re banking on Orian Williams (producer on Anton Corbijn’s Control) and Gill to take what we hope is a non-conventional route.

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).

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