Jonah Hill to Play Legendary Late Rocker in New Martin Scorsese Biopic

Jonah Hill has taken on some high-profile roles in the past decade, and now the accomplished actor is set to portray a legendary late rocker in a new Martin Scorsese biopic. According to Deadline, Hill will play Jerry Garcia, the late frontman of the Grateful Dead, in a film that Scorsese is directing for Apple. The movie will reportedly focus on the band’s rise to fame, with Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann all set to serve as executive producers.

The Grateful Dead was originally formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Blending elements of all different kinds of music genres — such as blues, rock, jazz, and country, to name a few — the band quickly became a household name with a dedicated fanbase known as Deadheads. Sadly, Garcia passed away in 1995, at the age of 53. He had been staying in a drug rehab facility and died of a heart attack. With nearly two dozen studio albums under their belt, all recorded between 1967 and 1990, the Grateful Dead continues to tour the world as Dead & Company, carrying on the legact that Garcia and the remaining members set in motion nearly five decades ago.

Notably, Scorsese is no stranger to working with the band, as he previously served as an executive producer of Long Strange Trip, a 2017 documentary about the Grateful Dead. he is also no stranger to working with Hill, as the pair previously teamed up with Leonardo DiCaprio for 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street. All three wound up with Oscar nominations for the movie, with Hill being recognized in the Best Supporting Actor category. DiCaprio got a Best Actor nomination, and Scorses got one for Best Director.

In a past interview with Howard Stern, Hill told the radio host that Scorses was the best director he has ever worked with, and shared that he learned a lot from the filmmaker. “When I hear you talk about Ivan Reitman, I understand how much you absorbed like a sponge from movies,” Hill said to Stern at the time. “Imagine me for that, whether it’s Judd [Apatow] or Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg], whether it’s Bennett Miller, Spike Jonze, Martin Scorsese, Coen Brothers, Quentin Tarantino, Gus Van Sant.”

Hill also, in a separate interview, stated that he happily took a pay cut to shoot Wolf of Wall Street with Scorsese. “I would sell my house and give him all my money to work for him,” he said, per the BBC. “I would have done anything in the world. I would do it again in a second. This isn’t about money. You should do things that you care about.”