Michelle Williams to Star as Peggy Lee in Biopic, Billie Eilish to Possibly be Executive Producer on the Film

Fever, a Peggy Lee biopic about the legendary singer, has its lead in Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams. Not only that, but it will have possibly been acquired by MGM to back the film, according to Deadline. Singer Billie Eilish is even in talks to be an executive producer with her mother, Maggie Baird, and the CEO of Eilish’s label Darkroom, Justin Lubliner.

The director behind movies like Carol starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and Dark Waters that starred Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, Academy Award nominee Todd Haynes is set to direct Fever with Doug Wright (Quills) writing the script.

Fever is the third movie that Williams and Haynes have worked on together, and those movies are I’m Not Here and Wonderstruck.

Peggy Lee, real name Norma Deloris Egstrom was born in 1920. Lee is perhaps best remembered today for her seductive cover of the song Fever, and it became a hit after it was recorded in 1958. At 16, she started singing professionally and, at 22, recorded her first number one hit, Somebody Else Is Taking My Place. During her career, she became an accomplished actor. She was Oscar-nominated for her performance in 1955’s Pete Kelly’s Blues as a despairing alcoholic blues singer. She died in 2002 at the age of 81.