Danny Boyle was ‘in grief’ after David Bowie refused to let him use music in biopic

Danny Boyle has admitted that David Bowie’s ‘refusal’ to let him use his music in a planned biopic left him ‘in grief’.

The Oscar-winning director was forced to scrap a planned musical about the legendary singer’s life when he was refused rights to all of his songs.

Speaking to the Radio Times, Boyle, 59, said that screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce had already penned the script for the film.

He admitted that the pair were left in “grief” when it became apparent that the film couldn’t go ahead as he was “very keen to direct a musical.”

The Slumdog Millionaire director said that he then threw himself into the Steve Jobs film to “fill the space in my heart left by the abandoned Bowie script”.

He went on to say that he’d be “very keen” to return to the project if Bowie suddenly gave the red light.

Talking about the film in an interview last month, Boyle said: “It’s a wonderful script, by Frank Cottrell Boyce.

“It’s a sort of musical, but we couldn’t get the music rights ... So, we had to put it away for the moment.”

Boyle is currently promoting his Jobs biopic, written by The West Wing’s Aaron Sorkin and starring Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet.