Shailene Woodley to play Janis Joplin (not Janie Jimplin) in California tax credit-funded biopic

In the latest example of 30 Rock being less sitcom and more Nostradamus-esque prophecy, former American teenager and big little liar Shailene Woodley has been cast to star as Janis Joplin in an upcoming biopic. This is per Variety, which reports that the film will be funded by California tax credits. Woodley is also producing the film, and celebrated the fact that the film will shoot in the state that “meant so much to Janis Joplin” in a statement obtained by the trade outlet. 

Okay, so, two things, and both of them totally happened on 30 Rock. Much of the series’ third season focused on Jenna Maroney’s (Jane Krakowski) attempts to film a Janis Joplin biopic, despite being about a decade older than the singer was at the time of her death, and despite the fact that they were unable to obtain the life rights to her story, leaving Jenna to play a character obviously inspired by Joplin named either Janie Jimplin or Jackie Jormp-Jomp, depending on the day. As Variety notes in their story, studios have attempted to bring a Joplin movie to the screen for decades, to the point that it was a known joke by the time 30 Rock aired these episodes in 2009. Even after that, Amy Adams was circling the role of Joplin in 2010. (She has since gone on to play another role that she almost certainly beat Jenna Maroney out for with this year’s Nightbitch.) That being said, musician biopics are as popular—or at least as abundant—as they’ve ever been since Rami Malek’s Best Actor win for Bohemian Rhapsody, so maybe the time is finally right for Joplin to make it past the idea stage, even if Woodley is a few years older than Joplin was at the time of her death. 

The $2.5 million in funding Woodley’s film will receive from the state of California is also promising, as it is also a thing that happened on 30 Rock. In season five episode “I Heart Connecticut,” Jenna participates in a Saw-adjacent torture porn film that receives funding from the state of Connecticut. However, that funding is threatened when those dang bureaucrats worry that the film’s villain, Slaughterface, killing women and trying to build a governor’s mansion out of breasts doesn’t portray the state in a good light. As long as Woodley and her team can avoid offending California in such a way, Joplin should be golden!