Will it play on screen?

At first, filmmaker Gus Van Sant was so affected by Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide that he wanted to make a biopic on the Seattle grunge musician’s life. What he made instead -- “Last Days,” which opened Friday in Los Angeles -- isn’t one per se.

Indeed, “Last Days” is best described as an impressionistic art/experimental film -- a mood piece -- that attempts to get inside the confused and agitated state of a rock musician named Blake, just before his suicide. The most obvious way it draws parallels to Cobain is in the fact that actor Michael Pitt looks hauntingly like him.

“I had worked on a few biopics and all seemed to cave in -- a Warhol biopic and a Harvey Milk biopic. And ones that did happen, like ‘The Doors,’ collapsed under the weight of too much information

The more traditional music biopic that Van Sant is out to subvert is actually doing quite well, particularly in the wake of last year’s Oscar-winning “Ray” -- with Hollywood showing support for films about other famous singers who overcame adversity and went on to become American icons.

For instance, 20th Century Fox is positioning “Walk the Line,” a Johnny Cash-June Carter biopic starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, as an Oscar candidate, with a tentative Nov. 18 release date. “Walk the Line” concentrates on Cash’s life in the 1950s and ‘60s, from the time he made his first rockabilly recordings at Memphis’ Sun Records to when he married Carter in 1968 and became a heroic cultural figure for his tours of prisons.

“I want to shine a light on what people don’t know about him, rather than what they do,” said “Walk the Line” director James Mangold. “I want to show how John Cash started as a pained, brunet James Dean wandering around Memphis and writing the kind of songs he wanted to hear rather than what he did hear.”

Universal, which released “Ray,” is working with singer-actress Kristin Chenoweth of the hit Broadway musical “Wicked” and TV’s “West Wing” on development of a film about British pop/song stylist Dusty Springfield.

“I was drawn to the kind of conflicted and complicated growing-up period she had,” Chenoweth said. “I thought this made her a far more complicated person than the ‘Wishin’ and Hopin’ ’ and ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ singer that we know.”

And there are no less than three Janis Joplin projects. One, called “Piece of My Heart” and starring Renee Zellweger, is already in development. Another reported in the trade press is said to feature the singer Pink. A third, listing in its cast Laura Theodore -- who played Joplin in the original theatrical production of “Love, Janis” -- has a website.

A British film about the mysterious 1969 death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones has been completed with the little-known Leo Gregory as Jones. Its director is Stephen Woolley, producer of several Neil Jordan films. A U.S. release date for “Stoned” has yet to be announced.

Although some or even most of these projects may never reach the screen, narrative movies about the following singers, musicians and music-industry figures have in recent years been discussed, optioned, written or made but not theatrically distributed: 50 Cent, the Alarm, the Clash, Spade Cooley, Bob Dylan, George Gershwin, Florence Greenberg, Bill Haley, Jimi Hendrix, the Turtles, Joy Division, the Langley Schools Music Project, Leiber & Stoller, Freddie Mercury/Queen, Notorious B.I.G., Gram Parsons, Phil Ochs, the Ramones, Dean Reed, the Shaggs, Phil Spector, the Village People, Vivaldi, Hank Williams and Jackie Wilson.

A medley of styles

As might be expected, filmmakers’ approaches can span a range that includes traditional storytelling and the just plain weird. Take Dylan. “I’m Not There” -- named after an unreleased Dylan song -- will feature six characters, including a black orphan who calls himself Woody Guthrie and an androgynous rock star named Jude Quinn hounded by a reporter named Mr. Jones. Todd Haynes (“Velvet Goldmine”) plans to begin filming early next year.

There are also numerous projects about cult favorites who never became famous -- in the U.S., at least.

Rick Bieber directed and co-wrote the unreleased “Crazy,” about the influential but little-known 1950s-era country music guitarist Hank Garland, who suffered a near-fatal auto accident at his prime. Country singer Waylon Payne plays Garland; he also plays Jerry Lee Lewis in the upcoming “Walk the Line.”

Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone Company working on the story of Reed, a Denver pop singer who joined a leftist radical movement in the 1960s and moved to East Germany where he became a star. “Tom is interested in playing Dean Reed and if the script is great, he’ll follow up with this,” Goetzman said.

And actor John Leguizamo says he’d still like to star in a long-languishing Fox Searchlight film about Mexican lounge-music and sound-effects pioneer Juan Garcia Esquivel. A favorite of hi-fi and stereo buffs of the 1950s but overlooked by the rock generation, the colorful Esquivel staged a comeback when “space-age pop music” fans championed him in the 1990s. He died in 2002.

“What keeps me passionate about the project is the music,” Leguizamo said. “It’s so wild, so out-of-the-box. How does that dude come up with such trippy concepts and persevere despite all the hard knocks?”