Amy, the recent documentary based on the life of late singer Amy Winehouse, is set to become the highest-grossing British-made documentary in the UK.
Winehouse passed away from accidental alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27. The feature-length documentary already broke a UK box office record in its opening weekend.
Various reports claim that Amy looks certain to surpass Senna, also made by the film’s director Asif Kapadia, as the top-selling British non-concert documentary at the UK box office.
Amy has currently grossed £3.16m since its release in July. Senna, meanwhile, has brought in £3.17m since 2010.
Hamish Moseley, Head of Distribution at Altitude Film Distribution, said of the news, “Amy is an extraordinary film that we always felt had the potential to be an unusual success.”
The highest-grossing non-British documentary of all time is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (£6.5m), released in 2004. It’s followed by March of the Penguins (£3.31m).
Director Asif Kapadia recently spoke to NME about the making of his new documentary. Kapadia said that he became increasingly “angry” whilst making the film and finding out more about Winehouse’s demise, elaborating that he “wanted the audience to be angry” too.
“People watching the film tend to feel a bit guilty,” the filmmaker said. “One reading of it is that we all got into this idea that we could bully this girl, or join in laughing at her, because she wouldn’t answer back and didn’t have anyone around her who seemed to care.”
“We never stopped to think about what we were doing to her. This is a girl who had a mental illness, yet every comedian, every TV host, they all did it with such ease, without even thinking. We all got carried away with it.”
