Director Randall Miller will pass the time until he can begin shooting his Aaron Eckhart-starring Dennis Wilson biopic with another story of rock 'n' roll and cult followings: Miller is currently prepping CBGB, a biopic about the famous T-shirt, music festival, and all-purpose brand name that spent its formative years as a venue where bands played sometimes. The film will revolve around Alan Rickman as the late Hilly Kristal, the club's founder who maintained order during punk's heyday by being dryly imperious and vaguely threatening, and speaking with a slow, deliberate sarcasm that suggested he might at any minute kill everyone in the room if he didn't get his detonators. No word on what span of Kristal's life the film will cover, though of course the obvious choice would be to focus mostly on the late-'70s era when bands like the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television, and Blondie made their home there (provided Miller plans to ascertain the rights to use their music and have actors portray them), then cut quickly through the '80s hardcore scene and skip right to the club's final concert before it closed in 2006, a year before Kristal's death. That's how most people prefer to remember CBGB anyway.
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