Joni Mitchell and director working on biopic script

Cameron Crowe, the director of Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire, is developing a new drama film with Joni Mitchell about her life.

According to a story on the entertainment site Above the Line – which was reposted on Mitchell’s website – the project is not a documentary and Mitchell has been collaborating on the script for two years.

Crowe made his name as a teenager writing for the magazines Rolling Stone and Creem, experiences he dramatised in Almost Famous. He has a longstanding friendship with Mitchell, whom he has interviewed numerous times; in 2017 he accompanied her to a Grammys gala, her first public appearance since suffering a brain aneurysm two years earlier.

Mitchell, 79, has not released a studio album since 2007’s Shine and kept a low profile after her 2015 aneurysm. But she returned to live performance with a surprise set at the Newport folk festival last July.