EXCLUSIVE: Ted Field’s Radar Pictures is in development on McQueen, a feature about the late fashion icon Alexander McQueen.
The project will be an adaptation of James Phillips’ play McQueen: or Lee and Beauty, which opened in the West End in 2015, five years after the designer’s passing.
Screenwriter Zach Helm, whose credits include Stranger Than Fiction and Deep Water, is penning the script. Phillips will be collaborating with Helm on the development of the project.
In the UK stage version, Olivier Award-winning actor Stephen Wight starred as McQueen, with Glee’s Dianna Agron debuting the role of Dahlia, a young woman who breaks into his London home.
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The synopsis for the movie reads: “Lee McQueen, alone and troubled in his beautiful townhouse, is trying to come up with his new collection. He must pitch to his investors the next morning, but he’s got nothing: inspiration has deserted him. Dahlia, a mysterious young woman, breaks into his house. She wants to steal a dress but also to escape from her own troubled life. As McQueen is about to call the police something in her raw honesty, her boldness, intrigues him. He changes his mind, puts down the phone.”
Casting decisions have yet to be made. The McQueen family is said to have been supportive of the original stage play but we understand there haven’t been discussions with them about the movie.
Maria Frisk and Michael Napoliello will produce alongside Radar’s Ted Field, the veteran Hollywood producer and music executive whose producing credits include Riddick, Runaway Bride, Three Men And A Little Lady and Cocktail.
Phillips shared: “I’m thrilled to be working with Radar Pictures and Zach to bring Lee and Beauty to the big screen. It’s a dream to have a chance to walk again into the visionary world of Alexander McQueen, an artist I have loved for so long. When I first conceived this way of telling Lee’s story, it always seemed to me something that would lend itself wonderfully to cinema, so to have the chance to work with such a brilliant team of people is a great privilege.”
Radar’s Maria Frisk commented: “Alexander McQueen’s intense brilliance cast an inspirational light and a perilous darkness. James and Zach invited us to take that journey in his steps – into the extraordinary, imaginative mind of genius – and to create the definitive cinematic portrait of the man behind the legend.”
Helm noted: “Through his play, James has taken a subject that many would consider ‘too heavy a lift’ and buoyed it with joy, compassion, artistry and wonder. We hope to make a film not simply about Alexander McQueen, but of McQueen; tailored yet spectacular, challenging yet inspiring. I am thrilled to be working with Maria, Michael and the rest of the team at Radar to adapt this incredible piece about the complex and special human who lived inside the brilliant icon.”
McQueen is the fashion giant who blazed a trail in the 90s and 2000s. A four-time British designer of the year, he served as chief designer at Givenchy and oversaw his own hugely successful label, which has been worn by countless stars and celebrities in the decades since. He tragically died from suicide aged only 40.
