The Doors, the life and death of Jim Morrison

Twenty years after Jim Morrison's early death, Oliver Stone treated fans of The Doors to the very first feature film on the Los Angeles band's rise to glory, before its members broke up two years after the frontman's troubling death. The American director secured the rights for a screen adaptation of a 1980 Jim Morrison biography written by Jerry Hopkins and Daniel Sugerman, fighting off stiff competition to do so, notably from William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.

A clause in the contract signed with the rightsholders laid down the law for the film: in the screenplay, no parallels were to be drawn between Morrison's death and Pamela Courson, the singer's girlfriend until the very end. Oliver Stone confided how hearing one of the band's very first hits, Break on Through, left a lasting mark on him, explaining that when he first heard the song in the late 1960s, he was a soldier in Vietnam, and the song's lyrics resonated with him.

Although John Travolta was initially chosen for the role, Val Kilmer was ultimately cast to star alongside Meg Ryan as Pamela Courson. The American actor gave a staggeringly realistic performance as the Lizard King, replicating the singer's feline moves to perfection.

Despite being a sell-out box-office hit, members of The Doors and the singer's friends and family disputed the adaptation, claiming the film was a fantastical web of twisted truths, and portrayed Jim Morrison as an alcoholic tortured soul.