Grant Gee brings turbulent life of jazz pianist Bill Evans to screen in new biopic

A new biographical film project on jazz pianist Bill Evans is taking shape under director Grant Gee, according to a report published Thursday by The Guardian. The project is described as an account of Evans’s life marked by both artistic achievement and personal turbulence, with Gee framed as a filmmaker drawn to music stories that continue beyond the stage or studio.

Gee, best known for directing documentaries about artists including David Bowie, Radiohead and Joy Division, is also identified as the director of the music video for Radiohead’s “No Surprises.” The Guardian’s profile notes that the roughly four-minute video featured Thom Yorke miming inside a water-filled diver’s helmet, a production detail associated with apparent near-drowning during filming. The report uses that example to contextualize Gee’s approach to filming music as something physical and narrative, not just illustrative.

The Guardian report positions the Bill Evans biopic as an extension of Gee’s long-running engagement with musicians whose public work and private lives remain closely interwoven. It characterizes the film as a story about what happens when the “music stops,” focusing on the period when performance and reputation no longer provide structure, and personal strain can take over.

Bill Evans, an American pianist whose playing helped define modern jazz piano, is the subject of the new project, the report says, placing the filmmaker’s attention on a figure whose legacy includes both widely celebrated recordings and accounts of hardship. The Guardian’s piece frames the film as centered on Evans’s lived experience rather than a conventional chronology, emphasizing the emotional and psychological aftermath that can follow artistic peak.

The report also ties Gee’s documentary background to the expectations audiences may have for the biopic, particularly given the director’s past work. By drawing on years of documentary craft, the project is presented as intended to bridge the gap between music history and character study, using Evans’s story as the central thread.

While the Guardian story does not lay out release dates, cast lists, or production schedules in the account summarized here, it does situate the project within Gee’s established filmography and music-video work. That framing suggests the biopic will be evaluated both as a music film and as a bid to translate a complex life onto screen in a way that reflects Gee’s documentary method.

The next public steps for the project will likely involve additional reporting and formal announcements about production, casting, and distribution. Until then, the scope of the film, including what periods of Evans’s life it will cover and how it will handle sensitive material, remains to be clarified by the filmmakers or their representatives.