Variety is reporting that Jack O’Connell (’71, Unbroken) is set to take on the role of Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder in the feature film Twisting My Melon, which is being produced and directed by Matt Greenhalgh, whose screenwriting credits include the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy and Ian Curtis film Control.
“Shaun Ryder is the son of John Lennon, Johnny Rotten with a few kilos of John Belushi stamped in,” said Greenhalgh. “He’s risen from the dead more times than anyone can remember, and his poetry will last forever. Shaun, and the last true working-class band – the Happy Mondays – mainlined into my musical DNA when I was 16 years old. Like millions of others I readily boarded their ecstatic revolution. And thanks to AGC, I feel honoured to be able to author the only rock’n’roll movie I want to see”.
According to Variety, the film “will look at how Ryder’s relationship with his father, a working-class guitar hero dubbed the ‘Horseman,’ was tested when he achieved his own musical success.”
Along with O’Connell, the film will star Jason Isaacs (Star Trek Discovery) as Shaun’s father Derek Ryder, Maxine Peake (The Theory of Everything) as his mother, and Holliday Grainger (Cinderella) as his girlfriend.
