Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle has revealed that David Bowie rejected plans for a musical film about the life and work of the iconic musician.

Bowie apparently refused Boyle permission to use his songs in the film forcing Boyle to abandon the project altogether, as he told the Radio Times this week. Boyle revealed that he had spent years planning the film with screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, and that the denial to use Bowie’s music had left him “in grief”. Boyle is currently promoting a different biopic in the form of Steve Jobs, a film on the former Apple chief executive and it is a project he said he took on to “fill the space in my heart left by the abandoned Bowie script”. Meanwhile, Bowie will release his next album, Blackstar, in January.