Universal Pictures has set David Benioff to write an untitled drama about the life of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Studio has acquired rights to “Heavier Than Heaven,” a Cobain biography written by Charles Cross.
Universal Pictures has set David Benioff to write an untitled drama about the life of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Studio has acquired rights to “Heavier Than Heaven,” a Cobain biography written by Charles Cross. Pic is a co-production between Working Title and Reveille Motion Pictures. Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan, Ben Silverman and Graham Larson will produce. Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, will exec produce with Howard Weitzman. Silverman developed the film at Reveille before leaving to run NBC, and Weitzman is Love’s lawyer. The producers and studio would not address whether they had locked down music rights, or the nature of the story they are trying to tell. For “Heavier Than Heaven,” Cross had access to Cobain’s unpublished diaries as well as Cobain’s friends and family members. Cobain formed Nirvana in 1987 with bassis Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl, the latter of whom now fronts the Foo Fighters. Led by Cobain’s growling delivery, inventive guitar work and lyrics that appealed to a disaffected young generation, Nirvana ushered in the Seattle grunge music movement in the early ‘90s with hits like “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Cobain’s life was marked by depression and drug use, and he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1994, leaving behind his wife and a daughter. Benioff most recently scripted “The Kite Runner” as well as the Gavin Hood-directed X-Men spinoff film “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “Brothers,” the Jim Sheridan-directed drama.