{"id":2424042,"date":"2026-05-19T23:58:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T23:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2424042"},"modified":"2026-05-19T23:58:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T23:58:00","slug":"planned-billy-joel-biopic-does-not-have-piano-mans-ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/planned-billy-joel-biopic-does-not-have-piano-mans-ok\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Billy Joel biopic does not have Piano Man’s OK"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Say hello to Hollywood: A Billy Joel biopic is in the works, Variety has reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Titled \u201cBilly & Me,\u201d the feature film will center on Joel\u2019s early years, as seen through the perspective of his first manager, Irwin Mazur. But the Piano Man himself does not approve of the project.<\/p>\n

Mazur first came into the picture\u00a0while Joel\u00a0was\u00a0living on Long Island in the \u201860s. He\u00a0signed the musician in 1970, just a few years before everything changed, with the \u201cPiano Man\u201d song and album release in 1973.<\/p>\n

Film production is scheduled to kick off this fall in Canada\u00a0and New York, Variety reported.<\/p>\n

\u201cBilly & Me\u201d is apparently playing on without Joel\u2019s life or music rights.\u00a0Claire Mercuri,\u00a0Joel’s spokesperson, provided this statement to Newsday: “Since 2021, the parties involved have been officially notified that they do not possess Billy Joel’s life rights and will not be able to secure the music rights required for this project. Billy Joel has not authorized or supported this project in any capacity, and any attempt to move forward without it would be both legally and professionally misguided.”<\/p>\n

Details including casting, specifics on the story and a distributor have yet to be announced, but there is a director attached: John Ottman, who is no stranger to the biopic genre. He edited\u00a0\u201cMichael,\u201d which told the story of Michael Jackson from 1966 to 1988, and \u201cBohemian Rhapsody,\u201d which followed the rise of Queen. Adam Ripp will produce the film and pen the screenplay.<\/p>\n

Ottman gave a statement to Variety, which reads in part, “I\u2019m really proud of the development work Adam Ripp and I did to shape \u2018Billy & Me\u2019 into both a deeply emotional and fun story. This is the formative years of Billy and his relationship with Irwin Mazur, the man who recognized Billy\u2019s amazing talent even before Billy did himself.”<\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/span><\/p>\n

\n\tRachel Weiss joined Newsday in 2016. As a real estate\/living multimedia reporter, Rachel writes feature stories and contributes to and appears in on-camera video packages.\u00a0She was the lead reporter on Newsday\u2019s LI Acts of Kindness series.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.newsday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say hello to Hollywood: A Billy Joel biopic is in the works, Variety has reported. Titled \u201cBilly & Me,\u201d the feature film will center on Joel\u2019s early years, as seen through the perspective of his first manager, Irwin Mazur. But the Piano Man himself does not approve of the project. Mazur first came into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2424043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[21751,21912,21800],"class_list":["post-2424042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-celebrities","tag-movies","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Planned-Billy-Joel-biopic-does-not-have-Piano-Mans-OK.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2424042"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2424044,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2424042\/revisions\/2424044"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2424043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2424042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2424042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2424042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}