Penn Badgley, Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl’s Penn Badgley has been cast as singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley in writer-director Daniel Algrant’s Greetings from Tim Buckley. Buckley released the album "Grace" in 1994. Three years later, the 30-year-old singer drowned after going for a swim in Tennessee’s Wolf River. Others mentioned for the Jeff Buckley role included Breaking Dawn’s Robert Pattinson and 127 Hours‘ James Franco.
There has been a lot of confusion because the co-producer of an actual Jeff Buckley biopic had denied that Penn Badgley was at all involved in her project. Just as confusing is trying to figure out if Pattinson, Franco, and whoever else are still up for the role in this other film project.
"To play a man who was singularly gifted as an artist, greatly misunderstood and mythologized as a human being … It’s something very special and sacred. I’m going to give all I can to this project," Badgley said Monday in a statement released through producing company Smuggler Films.
The release adds that "Greetings from Tim Buckley follows the true story of the days leading up to Jeff Buckley’s eminent 1991 performance at his father’s tribute concert in St. Ann’s Church. Through a romance with a young woman working at the concert, he comes to understand the father who abandoned him."