Josephine Decker has her first film in the works since 2022’s “The Sky Is Everywhere,” and it’s another biopic, like her criminally underseen 2020 film “Shirley,” about writer Shirley Jackson. But this one’s subject may surprise Decker fans, as Variety reports that the film will be about Irish musician Sinead O’Connor.
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The film will cover O’Connor’s early life and start in the music industry and her build to global fame, as well as her controversial campaigning against crimes committed by the Catholic Church and the Irish State. Decker has had the project in development since the 2022 doc “Nothing Compares,” all about the singer, released a year before O’Connor passed away.
Irish writer Stacey Gregg pens the script for the film, BBC Films funding its development. Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly produces the project via her Nine Daughters banner, with Iain Canning and Emile Sherman also producing via See-Saw Films, and Tim Clark executive producing via ie: entertainment. Simon Gillis of See-Saw is also involved, as is BBC Film commissioning exec Kristin Irving.
O’Connor was one of biggest pop artists in the world in the early 1990s, winning a Grammy at age 23 for her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” The album spent six weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard chart, with its hit single, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the most popular song of O’Connor’s career. O’Connor also won MTV‘s Video Of The Year for the song’s music video. But O’Connor’s passionate political views courted controversy, and her career was never the same after she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” O’Connor’s continued to produce albums after the incident, but her career never fully recovered from the backlash.
As for Decker, her other features include 2018’s “Madeleine’s Madeleine,” 2014’s “Thou Wast Mild And Lovely,” and 2013’s “Butter On The Latch.” Expect her film about O’Connor to continue her ambitious experimental approach to narrative film.
So when should Decker’s Sinead O’Connor biopic be ready for audiences? It’s safe to expect it at Sundance, probably in 2027.
