Elton John Biopic Scores A Director

Elton John's self-produced film about his own life is, as previously reported, currently crocodile-rocking through development. Rocket Man has a script by Lee Hall, with whom John previously collaborated on the Billy Elliot musical, and it now also has a director, in the form of commercials and FX man Michael Gracey. He must be high as a kite by now.

The word on the street - or at least, the word coming down from John's company Rocket Films - is still that Rocket Man is set to be an unconventional biopic, relating a fantastical version of John's life, from musical child prodigy to world-conquering, eccentrically-bespectacled pop star.

“It will be as unique as Elton’s life", Rocket Films CEO Steve Hamilton Shaw promised back in 2011, "told in a non-linear and hyper-visual manner that will transport people through the many intense experiences, some wonderful, some not, that helped define Elton as an artist, musician and man”.

It all sounds a perfect fit for the director whose bizarre imagination brought us the Evian roller-babies{ =nofollow}. Gracey's name has previously been attached to high-profile movies like Disney's abandoned Snow White riff The Order Of The Seven, and the off-kilter Jim Henson biopic Muppet Man (which seems to have disappeared in the wake of James Bobin's newly revivified Muppets). He's also on board for The Greatest Showman On Earth: another life story, which has Huge Ackman signed up to play the legendary huckster PT Barnum.

Rocket Man looks to be the film that will officially constitute Gracey's directorial debut though, and the production's next job is apparently to find the perfect actor to fill the giant platforms of the young Elton.