HOUSTON, TX. (Top40 Charts/ Potion Pictures) - Potion
Pictures announced today pre-production of THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED, the story of The Big Bopper, who died in the infamous plane crash on February 3, 1959, with
Buddy Holly and
Ritchie Valens. J.P. "Jape" Richardson, Jr. was riding high on the success of his gold record CHANTILLY LACE when he died in a frozen Iowa cornfield during the Winter Dance Party Tour.
Potion Pictures is partnering with J.P. Richardson, born 84 days after his famous father's death. "Although Dad wrote three Number No 1 songs and is acknowledged as the originator of the music video, his story has never been told because my mother refused to speak about him for years, blaming the music industry for his death."
"Jape" was the only musician with children. His grandson Thomas Richardson is attached to play J.P. as a boy. John Mueller, famed for his inventive New Winter Dance Party Tour, will play Buddy Holly; Ray Anthony is slated to play Ritchie Valens, a role he has re-created on Mueller's tours and in Branson, MO.
Sohrab Mirmontazeri, winner of the Audience Choice Award at the New York International Film Festival for THE BEAUTIFUL WIND, will direct a script by J.S. Duff, who used the Bopper's music and the "second-hand" memories of J.P. as inspiration.
Filming is slated for December in Houston and Beaumont, Texas (where the Bopper and his son were both raised) and in January in Clear Lake, Iowa, site of the last performance of the musicians, during the 49th anniversary events.
Unlike the films of the other two rockers, this story begins the day of the crash. The Bopper's life unfolds as his posthumously-born son struggles to discover the truth behind the man who was both his father and a world-famous entertainer famed for "Hel...looo, Baby."
Conspiracy theories and urban legends about the crash abound. Buddy Holly carried a gun on the plane and the Bopper's body was found twice as far from the crash site as the others, leading to stories he initially survived. Waylon Jennings gave up his seat on the plane to Jape, a popular radio announcer before be-bop and rock'n'roll changed his life and music forever. Website: https://www.bigboppermovie.com.
