THE ‘80s pop duo Milli Vanilli is getting the Hollywood treatment with the production of the feature length film Girl You Know It’s True now underway.
The musicians, with their iconic look, Fabrice Morvan and Robert Pilatus will be played by Elan Ben Ali and Tijan Njie, respectively. The title of the upcoming film is a reference to the group’s debut album that became a worldwide success, propelling them to stardom.
Leonine Studios, the company behind the production released two first-look pictures from the production. The images reveal the actors transformation into the duo from Munich, Germany.
Not long after they emerged on the music scene, they became a global sensation. Their R&B and dance-pop tracks like Baby Don’t Forget My Number, Girl I’m Gonna Miss You and Blame It on the Rain.
Their songs landed them the ‘Best New Artist’ award at the Grammys in 1990. However, rumours started mounting that they were lip-synching their performances after a technical error during one of their concerts. It was later revealed that none of the music they had produced was voiced by them but they were instead a fake band consisting of John Davis, Brad Howell, and Charles Shaw. The scandal resulted in lawsuits, their Grammy being rescinded and the group being outcast from the industry.
In 1998, Pilatus was found dead in a hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany, at the age of 33. The Associated Press reported at the time that Frank Farian, Milli Vanilli’s former producer, said Pilatus had been drinking and taking prescription pills the night before his death.
Actor Matthias Schweighöfer, the star of Netflix's Army of Thieves star who will next appear in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, will be playing Farian. According to a press release from Leonine Studios, the movie will focus on the story behind their highly publicised fall from grace.
“At the height of their fame, Milli Vanilli win the Grammy Award but the situation behind the scenes escalates and the pressure on Rob and Fab grows. When the truth is revealed, they stare into the abyss while the world witnesses one of the biggest scandals in music history,” the press release said.
German filmmaker Simon Verhoeven is writing and directing the movie. Howell, Pilatus’ sister, Carmen, and Davis’s daughter, Jasmin, are associate producers on the project.
Speaking about his movie, Verhoeven said in the press release, “Girl You Know It’s True is captivating on so many levels. It not only tells the spectacular rise of two underdogs making it to the zenith of showbiz within one summer, but it also gives a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of that illusory world of fame and its sometimes tragic and unscrupulous machinations.”
“Personally, I think Rob and Fab did not deserve to become the sole scapegoats of this scandal,” he added. – The Vibes, September 8, 2022
