Fox Searchlight To Develop Susan Boyle Story Based On Musical ‘I Dreamed A Dream’

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Susan Boyle: Movie of my life won’t be Hollywood fluff

Homing in ... Susan Boyle with her platinum discs

By MATT BENDORIS
Chief Feature Writer

Published: 21st November 2012

SUSAN BOYLE is relaxing on the sofa in her humble ex-council house — talking about a multi-million-dollar deal for a Hollywood movie about her life.

The West Lothian singer barely bats an eyelid as she reveals the next chapter of her amazing life story.

SuBo has just returned from the States, where she put pen to paper on the deal with movie giants Fox Searchlight.

Filming begins next year on the gritty, warts-and-all biopic which the Scot promises won’t contain any “Hollywood fluff”.

The 51-year-old Britain’s Got Talent star has been given full creative control of the project and will even help select the actress who will play her.

Screen greats Glenn Close and Julie Walters have already been tipped for the leading role.

But the singer says a clause in the megabucks contract means she will be shadowed around her home in Blackburn by the mystery A-lister. Susan says: “The casting has yet to be done.

“We’re currently at the stage of selecting a big Hollywood producer and writer.

“But I’ve been told I can expect to have a shadow as the actress researches the role — so I hope she likes Blackburn.”

While Susan doesn’t know who’ll be slipping into her shoes just yet, she does fancy heart-throb George Clooney for the part of her London-based manager Andy Stephens.

She laughs: “George has grey hair too, although that’d be wishful thinking on my part.

“But it’s Hollywood — anything can happen. We’ll see.”

Susan casually delivers the stunning piece of showbiz news sitting in the cramped front room of her family home.

She simply refuses to budge from this modest gaff no matter how much her fortune — currently estimated at £22million and growing — swells from her 18million record sales.

Hit ... SuBo with her new album

Her label boss Simon Cowell hates it — branding it as just “that house” after it was broken into in January 2010.

The music mogul insisted his prize asset move into a £400,000 five-bedroom villa nearby.

But Susan rarely steps foot in the “posh house”, admitting she feels more comfortable in the semi-detached home she lived in with her late parents Patrick and Bridget.

She says: “Simon wanted me out because I was having various problems. That’s what the new posh house was all about.

“But this is my sanctuary, where I can be myself and just watch the telly and listen to music. It also helps me to keep grounded.

“It’s like living a double life. There’s Susan, who lives in Blackburn and no one bothers about — then there’s the singer Susan Boyle.” Like the singer, SuBo’s ‘sanctuary’ has had a major makeover since she shot to world-wide fame on the ITV1 talent show in 2009.

The back and front gardens have been neatly landscaped, while her famous white PVC front door — which the star was snapped outside countless times — has been replaced by a bespoke wooden one.

Susan laughs: “That old door was as famous as Downing Street at one point.

“When I got it replaced it was thrown in a skip outside — then the next day it went missing.

“I kept expecting to see someone trying to sell Susan Boyle’s door on eBay. Best of luck to them if they did.”

The mantelpiece in her front room is adorned by framed poems sent to her by adoring fans.

She smiles: “They’re a very creative bunch.”

The devout Catholic has a ‘holy corner’ with crucifixes and a portrait of the Virgin Mary, with an old photo of her folks, taken when they were in their mid-20s.

There’s also a snap of Susan with funnyman Peter Kay, from their 2011 Comic Relief No1 single I Know Him So Well.

But the cosy room is dominated by a giant Samsung flat-screen TV, on which Susan enjoys keeping up to date with the trials and tribulations of I’m A Celebrity.

She laughs: “I wouldn’t last two minutes in that jungle. The first time a bug landed on me I’d be like, ‘Get me out of here’.”

Susan also loves watching her beloved team Celtic.

She says: “I was at Parkhead sitting behind Paolo Nutini when we beat Barcelona 2-1.

“All through injury time I was begging the referee to blow for full-time.

“But I wasn’t crying like Rod Stewart after the game. I was just so excited. It was a great night.”

SuBo has yet to meet tartan rocker Rod — but she knows exactly what she’d ask him.

She says: “I’d love to do a duet with him even though Rod is very rocky.

“So it’d need to be a song that’s a bit more gentle. I’m not ready for the leather trousers just yet.”

Susan needed to convert a bedroom into a walk-in trophy cabinet to house all the gold and platinum discs celebrating her millions of record sales, alongside fans’ oil paintings of the Scot, and the walls of her hall are covered by beautiful watercolours from the brush of her artistic mum, who died in 2007, aged 91.

Her ex-miner dad Patrick — who was also an accomplished singer — passed away in 1990, aged 80.

Susan — the youngest of nine — says: “We Boyles always were a talented lot.”

The star still gets on average 150 letters and packages a week from around the world. Some are simply addressed to: Susan Boyle, Singer, Scotland.

Somehow they find her. But along with the poems and portraits, there are also some very strange requests.

She explains: “I get asked to sing at hundreds of weddings and even funerals. They want me to do Wild Horses, bizarrely.

“The strangest though was a sock with a hole I got through the post with a letter asking me to mend it.

“I don’t know what sort of service they thought I was providing.”

Behind the scenes, Susan is known as a ‘one-take wonder’ in the recording studio.

So much so she finished her latest album Standing Ovation, The Greatest Songs From The Stage, an incredible SIX WEEKS early.

The album, released this week, is currently sitting at No5 in the midweek chart.

She says: “I’m in a bubble when I sing. I always try to remember the lyrics as I don’t want to waste people’s time.”

Next spring she’ll begin her first mini tour, while the musical about her life story, I Dreamed A Dream, will be premiered in Australia in June.

Along with signing her secret movie deal in the States last week, Susan hit the chat show circuit where she bumped into movie legend Robert De Niro TWICE in two days. Susan quips: “The first time he came over and just said hello.

“The second time I told him to stop stalking me.”

She also splashed out £10,000 on Christmas pressies at posh New York jewellers Tiffany.

But she’s very coy when it comes to her personal fortune, joking: “Money? Who said I had any money?”

Although she did admit on Graham Norton’s Radio 2 show at the weekend she has so much, she can’t spend it.

Susan says: “Look, it’s true I don’t have any worries any more and wouldn’t need to work again.

“But I love what I do. It doesn’t even feel like work.

“I’m also so relaxed now. I’ve mellowed a lot because at first I was a bit harum-scarum.”

She adds: “Three years ago there’s no way I could imagine my life story would be interesting enough to make into a movie.

“I guess it was a surprise when I showed the world I could sing on Britain’s Got Talent.

“Now my whole life has turned into one big surprise.”

Susan Boyle’s fourth album, Standing Ovation, The Greatest Songs From The Stage, is out now.

matt.bendoris@the-sun.co.uk

Susan Boyle: Movie of my life won’t be Hollywood fluff

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/scottishnews/4656212/Susan-Boyle-Movie-of-my-life-wont-be-Hollywood-fluff.html#ixzz2XWiI2wwp

Following with news below:

Deadline News reported:

Fox Searchlight To Develop Susan Boyle Story Based On Musical ‘I Dreamed A Dream’

By NANCY TARTAGLIONE, International Editor | Friday, 23 November 2012 14:45 UKTags: Fox Searchlight

Fox Searchlight has acquired the life rights toBritain’s Got Talent sensation Susan Boyle along with rights to the UK musical I Dreamed A Dreamthat’s based on her story. The plan is to combine the two to develop a re-imagined filmed version of the musical. Lucas Webb, who pursued the project for Searchlight out of London, tells me the aspiration is to do “a sensitive and honest biopic infused with music.” It’s early stages and no director or screenwriter has been attached, but the project is “front and center,” says Webb.

Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent audition in 2009, singing the Les Misérables lament I Dreamed A Dream, catapulted her to overnight Internet stardom. Her first album that same year became the best-selling UK debut record of all time. A jukebox musical, I Dreamed A Dream is produced by Michael Harrison and spans Boyle’s life from infancy in a working class town in northern Scotland through to how she learned to deal with the onset of sudden international fame. I Dreamed A Dream started its regional UK tour in March this year to strong reviews and will transfer to Australia next year before heading to the West End.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/11/fox-searchlight-developing-susan-boyle-story-based-on-musical-i-dreamed-a-dream/

Susan Boyle: Singer and Now Businesswoman

By Marie Sheahan Brown

Who can forget the YouTube masterpiece? She strode and sashayed onto the stage with golden stature and confidence. She sparred wittily with the three famous judges, wearied by their long day of auditions in Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t look the part of a “professional singer,” although one might perceive that being “currently unemployed” at forty-seven left little extra for beauty-shop pampering. Was she, rather, a comedienne? Susan Boyle audition

Then she sang. The formerly skeptical audience stood enraptured, tears welling as she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables with stunning clarity and passion.

More than five years after the seven-minute audition video aired on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009, and promptly hit worldwide news feeds, multitudes in America and beyond remember Susan Boyle. Since she first broke Amazon pre-sale records in September 2009, millions have bought her albums. Each year, a new carefully crafted album has been released in time for Christmas. Since 2009, five albums have garnered sixty-three gold and ninety-four platinum sales levels in forty-two countries. Her sixth album, Hope, will be released on October 21 in the United States.

Scottish and United Kingdom audiences thrilled to Miss Boyle’s first full-length concert tours in 2013 and 2014. Now she’s coming to America—home of an immediate and strong support base—starting in San Diego on October 8, and singing her way across the southern half of the United States at venues in twenty cities. A sweep through the northern states could likely follow in the future.

See http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/events

Many have written about Susan Boyle’s difficult and graced life. Her 2010 autobiography, The Woman I Was Born to Be, is a good source. Now fifty-three, she carefully revealed late in 2013 that, after decades of mistaken assumptions, she had finally been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The relief of self-knowledge strengthens and encourages her after a lifetime of dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and some difficulty in handling emotions and relating comfortably to people.

“This is a point: People may have problems,” she states in a documentary, “but they’ve got other things as well. And they’ve got a lot more to offer.” (Gammon, Lottie, produced, filmed, and directed. “There’s Something About Susan.” Firecracker Films Ltd. for ITV, 45:37 minutes. 2013)

Fewer analyses have considered her role as a small businesswoman and philanthropist whose personal success has enhanced the lives and small businesses of countless others not only in her native Scotland but also in, for example, America.

Miss Boyle, easily mistaken for a stately five feet ten in the famous video, is, in fact, barely over five feet tall with soft, dainty hands and feet—a huggable China doll. So she does qualify as a smallbusinesswoman despite her multimillions in sales, which also benefit business giants like Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited; SYCOmusic (Simon Cowell); Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Amazon; and, more recently, concert tour bus companies. In significant other ways, she retains her focus on the little ones.

The woman who had “never been married, never been kissed” and remains a virgin has, since 2009, given birth with astonishing fecundity. Lewis Hyde well describes her kind of gift and fertility in his 1983 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: “I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

Mr. Hyde first explores traditional “gift economies,” in which citizens are considered wealthy not according to how much they acquire but how much they give. In fictional form, Jean M. Auel’s well-researched Earth’s Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear and five sequels) describes the creativity and ingenuity that led people to survive, to form communities, and to work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Goods, services, storytelling and musical talents, art, and many other gifts were appreciated in deeper ways than they might be in a typical “market economy.”

According to reviewer JoAnn Schwartz, “Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the ‘gift economy’ is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of gift exchange as ‘erotic’ commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos.

“In a market economy,” Ms. Schwartz continues, “one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding—although we generally call it ‘saving.’ In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase—increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement, and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.” (http://southerncrossreview.org/4/schwartz.html)

Susan Boyle does appreciate the financial security that she had never known, especially in the fearsome years after her mother died in 2007, when Miss Boyle kept her house cold so that she could afford the heating bill. Yet more important, Susan Boyle has said all along, “I sing to make people happy.” When she was a girl, the gift spoke “commandingly to the soul”—her soul. She honed, honed, honed the gift to perfection over decades of world obscurity. She sees with gratitude and humility the effects of this gift on people worldwide. When this gift is pointed out to her in personal conversation, she bows her head and lowers her eyes shyly. “Thank you.”

Miss Boyle’s fame and financial success have boosted tourism modestly in West Lothian, Scotland, with its pastoral more than spectacular scenery, a region that has suffered from bouts of economic depression and unemployment over the past few centuries. In February 2013, for example, following a centuries-old pattern, the main employer in the area—Halls of Broxburn meat processing plant—was closed by foreign owners, leaving 1,700 unemployed.

Lorraine Campbell co-owns and manages The Balbairdie—a nicely refurbished old hotel and pub in Bathgate, West Lothian. When the economy suffers, The Balbairdie feels it. Asked how she copes, Ms. Campbell replied, “You just keep going.” Happily, the local economy has improved some since 2013, according to Ms. Campbell in April 2014.

Miss Boyle has engaged experts like Andy Stephens, manager; Nicola Phillips, publicist; and Andrew Panton, creative and vocal director, to name a few. She has provided jobs for local personal assistants who handle correspondence, scheduling, wardrobe consultation, and myriad other details; gardeners; carpenters to renovate the council house she grew up and still lives in (her first big post-Britain’s Got Talent purchase); a housekeeper; women who fix her hair, do her nails, and apply her makeup for special public appearances and photo sessions; and others who tend to basic needs of a now-busy celebrity who still prefers to live in her home village, stop in at her favorite small shops and establishments, and take the bus.

Miss Boyle has also given seed money and sponsorship for creative business and charitable ventures in her local community and beyond. One start-up, Boyle’s Boutique, is an extended-family cottage industry that sells, among others, products featuring the new Boyle Tartan created for the family. Products may be ordered online.

Susan Boyle’s very capable personal assistant Sadie Boyle (no relation) says Miss Boyle gets about four hundred emails weekly, many requesting her generosity. This kind of response to another’s fame and fortune is not uncommon.

More unusual, and a clearer example of the fruits of the “gift economy,” is the generation of a worldwide community of Susan Boyle supporter-fans who have formed friendships, discovered or rekindled their own creative gifts, invested thousands of volunteer hours, spread financial generosity, and—to a small extent—started creative cottage enterprises for profit or merely to cover expenses.

Several unofficial Susan Boyle fansites live on the Internet. The first and largest, still flourishing, is www.susan-boyle.com. On April 11, 2009, Paul Wood, a London construction worker, watched Miss Boyle’s audition on TV and immediately put up a website. Starting within hours after the audition aired, people from many continents to whom Susan Boyle’s gift spoke “commandingly to the soul” were “irresistibly move[d]” to find out anything they could about her on the Internet. They frequently stumbled across Mr. Wood’s hastily launched site with its prolific discussion threads generating hundreds of written comments every day in the first two months of Miss Boyle’s fame.

To bring some order to the conversational chaos, Mr. Wood launched a companion Forum in June 2009 with more sophisticated software, accessed through the main website. Anyone could (and still can) join for free. The main rules are that one not be an Internet troll (a term and experience many had never heard of), that one behave reasonably civilly as outlined in posted guidelines, and that one not use the Forum itself for commercial purposes (more on that later).

Volunteer moderators and techies keep the discussions and online experience on an even keel. Online advertisements generated by Google AdSense and Amazon sales linked to the website (“SuBo Store”) help pay for the normal operational expenses.

In early 2010, Mr. Wood announced that he was going to auction off the website (some fifty thousand registered members) and its Forum (a few thousand registered members at the time). The worldwide member community could not bear the prospect of being taken over by some unknown commercial entity with other goals. So they decided to bid on the fansite themselves. A few members—by no means wealthy—each voluntarily loaned trusted fellow members a few thousand dollars to buy the fansite during the auction. The effort succeeded in July 2010.

Navigating through some tensions and hurt feelings (typical in any community anywhere), the worldwide Susan Boyle Fans International, Inc. (SBFII) community established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA. SBFII elects a multinational volunteer board of directors; keeps meticulous financial records and files annual tax returns; maintains bylaws; and holds online annual meetings and elections engaging active members. Technically not a charity, SBFII uses AdSense and SuBo Store income to cover modest expenses and keep a healthy bank balance. Funds left over from voluntary collections (often for tasteful gifts for Miss Boyle for special occasions) are donated to a charity of Susan Boyle’s choice, frequently benefitting children in Scotland. By December 2011, SBFII repaid all interest-free loans given by members to buy the website; it remains debt free. No member gets paid for services to SBFII or personally benefits financially.

From the beginning, even silver-haired grandmothers proficient only with email learned to navigate the fansites in order to participate in a community of people who have experienced an inexplicable response to Susan Boyle—both her singing and her unique way of being—unlike their response to other favorite singers. Within months, members began gathering in person around the globe (often in restaurants, boosting local economies). They attended (and surreptitiously filmed and posted to the fansites for the enjoyment of those who could not attend) Miss Boyle’s performances in various cities (Britain’s Got Talent tour venues in the UK; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, and more). Supporter-fans flocked to these events even though—until only 2013, when she first tried her own full-length concerts in Scotland—Miss Boyle was slated to sing just one, two, maybe three songs. These gatherings supported local hotels, B+Bs, restaurants, cab drivers, shops, and other travel-related businesses.

Miss Boyle and her team soon experienced that supporter-fans who came to these early events were older or at least more mature than stereotypical rowdies at, for example, Justin Bieber concerts. They saw that typical Susan Boyle supporter-fans are responsible, respectful, fun loving, generative. They include retired or active professionals—teachers, nurses, techies, writers, musicians, artists, farmers, truckers, businesspeople, social workers, radio hosts, professors, lawyers, homemakers, construction workers, postmasters, foresters.

To most gatherings (usually at restaurants) supporter-fans bring homemade memorabilia to share, including commemorative buttons and red scarves to identify themselves in various venues. The popularity of such items led SBFII to add another linked site, “Fan Creations,” linked in turn to the creators’ individual websites. Products include non-Susan-Boyle-related fan creations. Currently, three members offer SuBotique Hand Painted Apparel; Creative Images by tweek (Buttons, Mugs, etc.); and Susan Boyle Professional Singer chronicles gathered from news and other sources.

SBFII members often post creative ideas and images to discuss in writing with one another. Memorably, in 2009, a member from Texas, one from Iowa, and other volunteers, coordinated an international quilting bee. Supporter-fans from every continent, including Antarctica, created and mailed squares for a handmade quilt presented to Miss Boyle at a brunch following her debut solo appearance on the Todayshow on November 23—the day her first album, I Dreamed A Dream, was released in the United States and quickly broke world records in several categories.

Members can upload Susan-related videos that they have created; share poems that they’ve written; upload posters that they’ve designed digitally to document Miss Boyle’s career and accomplishments; upload news reports of supporter-fan activities, complete with photographs; post fine pencil drawings or paintings displaying talent the artists had only recently discovered; and offer a place where members can contribute their own essays. These essays, sometimes written in French or other non-English languages, often try to explain how the wee singer with the big voice; the shy woman who communicates profoundly—cor ad cor loquitur—through music others have written; the multimillionaire who stays in her small lifelong home and still takes the bus—the essentially inexplicable Susan Boyle—“irresistibly moves” them.

SBFII and other volunteers take responsibility to daily and positively post or re-post Susan Boyle news, photos, and encounters on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Their Internet involvement began immediately when Miss Boyle became famous—and once again experienced the bullying known since childhood, only this time inflicted by some members of the media and anonymous commentators. She writes in her autobiography, “What I didn’t know then, because I didn’t have a computer at the time, was that every time there was a mean comment about me in the press, a dozen messages of support would appear in response. On the Internet there was a growing community of fans. I had no idea how many people out there in the world felt moved to stick up for me, and I want to thank everybody for that.” (The Woman I Was Born to Be, pages 188–189)

Miss Boyle’s professional team also encourages creativity from fans. Starting with the first documentary of her life, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed A Dream, produced in 2009 by Talkback Thames, fans were invited via the official www.susanboylemusic.com site (picked up and promoted by volunteer sites) to send short videos of themselves saying “Hello, Susan!” with backdrops representing their locations. Several clips from around the world were chosen for the documentary. As a lead-up to Miss Boyle’s second album, The Gift, she held a worldwide “Susan’s Search” competition, inviting any amateur singer to upload a brief selfie singing “Silent Night.” The winner, Amber Stassi, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic from Brewerton, New York, sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Miss Boyle on the album and at the 2010 outdoor Today show appearance in New York City.

In the 2013 and 2014 concert tours in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Miss Boyle and her team selected local choirs to serve as back-up choruses in every city, receiving standard financial compensation. Already individual choir members in the United States are tweeting: “Aaliyah Buchanan ‏@Itsuko_Sora I’m to pumped, i get to sing for Susan Boyle!!!!” and “Drew Mikuska ‏@DrewMikuska Hahahahaha I’m singing backup for Susan Boyle.”

Already in the twenty cities spanning the southern United States, supporter-fans from as far away as Australia and Scotland are buying tickets. They are organizing pre-concert dinner-camaraderie gatherings for supporter-fans, some of whom they have never met in person but know through their written posts on fansites. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, airlines, public transportation providers, cab drivers, and many small businesses will benefit. Susan Boyle, her team, and numerous music-related vendors will profit.

Yet in Susan Boyle’s “gift economy,” which she neither forecasted nor manipulated, money can facilitate but cannot possibly buy the greatest benefits to the community in which she finds herself to be the generator and principal member. In this higher economy, she is both blessed herself and a blessing to countless others.

As recently reported on her official website, Susan says about her upcoming United States concert tour: “This is a brilliant moment for me. The past five years have been incredible, and it just keeps getting better. I have spoken so often about wanting to tour America and be able to visit different cities for the first time—I’m so excited. This really will be fantastic, and I can’t wait for October. The US embraced and supported me from the beginning, and it really feels like a second home. So I can’t wait to get on the road and perform there.”

Source:Small Business Exchange Northeast