Kurt Cobain's estate criticise Royal Opera House for unauthorised adaptation

Kurt Cobain's estate have criticised the Royal Opera House for a recent unauthorised adaptation of Gus Van Sant's 2005 film Last Days.

The film is a fictional account of the Nirvana singer's final days before his death via suicide at the age of 27 in 1994.

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Cobain's estate released a statement which said: “Sadly, it is an unauthorised attempt that seeks to profit and benefit from a brief meeting that took place 30 years ago.”

They continued by saying it was “created and written without the permission or input of the Cobain estate".

The Royal Opera House countered with their own statement which read: “It is a fictionalised account, and was produced with the permissions of Gus Van Sant and HBO."

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The venue ran a brief production of the show over four nights earlier this month at their Linbury Theatre. It was composed by Oliver Leith with a libretto by Matt Copson, who co-directed the adaptation along with Anna Morrisey.

When speaking about the project to The Guardian earlier this year, Leith spoke about Cobain saying he thought “the reason why this archetype, this Kurt figure, remains relevant” was because he “held so many contradictions within himself”.

Gus Van Sant's Last Days premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 to mixed reviews. The film starred Michael Pitt as Blake, a fictionalised version of Cobain. Last Days also starred Asia Argento, Lukas Haas and magician Ricky Jay.

There has been no official film biopic of Cobain and Nirvana but there have been a series of popular documentaries including Nick Broomfield's Kurt & Courtney which explored the conspiracy theory that the rock star was actually murdered.

Cobain also served as the inspiration for Robert Pattinson's interpretation of Batman.

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