Ever since young dancer Maddie Ziegler appeared in the music video for Sia’s Chandelier, the pair have had an ongoing creative relationship, to the point where you kinda can’t picture one artist without the other.
And now that artist/muse relationship has culminated in Sia’s debut feature film, Music. Starring Ziegler as an autistic, highly gifted teen called…Music, the movie will also feature Kate Hudson, Hamilton‘s Leslie Odom Jr, Juliette Lewis and Ben Schwartz.
Check out the sunny trailer for Music below, which introduces us to Kate Hudson’s free-spirited protagonist Zu. Saddled with her non-verbal half-sister Music, Zu gradually comes to see the world through the savant’s eyes; a candy-coloured, Etsy-meets-Busby-Berkeley environment of musical numbers based around Sia hits like Together.
The use of an able-bodied actor in an autistic role has already generated plenty of criticism. Sia briefly responded to angered fans on Twitter and defended her choice to cast Ziegler, saying that she “needed a dancer” to play the role of Music: “It’s not a documentary. Kate [Hudson] isn’t a drug dealer and Leslie Odom Jr isn’t from Ghana.”
While Sia and her team seem to have only the best and most poptimistic of intentions, we’ll have to wait until the film comes out to learn more. Music arrives in Australian cinemas on January 14; check the link below for more information.
