Jeff Buckley’s Mom Turned Down A Biopic Starring Brad Pitt As Her Son

Here’s one intriguing what-if from the intersection of music and cinema: Brad Pitt almost starred as Jeff Buckley in a biopic about the late, legendary singer.

A new Buckley documentary called It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley premieres this Friday at Sundance. As Variety reports, the project evolved from a biopic that would have starred Pitt.

As early as 2000, three years after Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River, Pitt was attempting to gain permission for the project from Buckley’s mother, Mary Guibert; he even made her a VIP guest at his wedding to Jennifer Aniston. Initially Guibert agreed, but over time she developed apprehensions, telling Pitt, “We’re going to dye your hair, put brown contact lenses on those baby blues, and you’re going to open your mouth and Jeff’s voice is going to come out?”

The project went on the backburner for a few years until the documentarian Amy Berg expressed interest in making the Buckley biopic as her narrative feature debut. Guibert was not thrilled at the idea of “being in a someone’s-learning-on-the-job situation.” So it was fortuitous that Berg ultimately decided a documentary was a better format for telling Buckley’s story. Pitt maintained involvement with the project as an executive producer.