The Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure star will also write and produce the project in co-operation with the Zappa Family Trust, a collaboration which allows Winter exclusive access to the Zappa Vault.

The director is planning to include never-seen-before visual and audio recordings, and previously released video footage, interviews and concert clips.

Winter tells The Hollywood Reporter he aims to tell the music icon's story in his own words, saying, "It will be an epic saga of a great American artist and thinker, a major event worthy of the scope of Zappa's prodigious and varied creative output, and the breadth of his personal and political life."

The moviemaker also has the approval of Zappa's widow Gail Zappa, who says, "We couldn't be happier to be working with Alex, an extraordinary filmmaker in his own right. With an advanced degree in Perfect Timing and a shared respect for 'conceptual continuity,' we feel it is our duty. We also like his attitudinal position - Gravity and Humor go a long way with us."

The producers and family are hoping for a release in 2017, 24 years after Zappa died from prostate cancer in 1993.