26
Oct
The late, legendary blues guitarist B.B. King was so influential, it’s going to take two biopics to tell the story. King’s estate is preparing a project separate from The Thrill Is On, which is set to star Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Selma), according to Variety. “We want to be crystal clear that the film announced by Pierce is not a biopic, as there are several major players involved in the new B.B. King biopic and the estate does not want there to be any confusion as to the nature of each separate project,” Vassal Benford, chairman of King’s estate, told…
30
Sep
Zendaya will play Ronnie Spector in A24’s upcoming adaptation of the iconic rock and roll singer’s 1990 biography Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, And Madness, according to Variety. The 24-year-old Zendaya recently made history as the youngest actress to win an Emmy lead actress in a drama series. She is only the second Black woman to win the award, after Viola Davis for her role on How to Get Away with Murder in 2015. Spector personally chose Zendaya to portray her. Former Disney Channel star Zendaya won the Emmy for her role as Rue in HBO’s Euphoria,…
16
Sep
“Nobody knows what I know and what I have seen. Only I can tell my story. Anyone else who tries is a charlatan and a fool looking for instant gratification without doing the work,” Madonna said of Universal’s previous attempts to make a movie about her life and career, and now it seems that the studio is in full agreement, as it’s been confirmed that she will direct its upcoming biopic, and pen it with Jennifer’s Body and Juno writer Diablo Cody. “I want to convey the incredible journey that life has taken me on as an artist, a musician,…
04
Aug
Whitney Houston will soon posthumously take her place amongst the recent cinematic annals of legendary music stars to receive the biopic treatment. The developing project in question, titled after her 1987 smash hit, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, has just found itself a studio home with Sony’s TriStar pictures, having also secured a director and even a targeted 2022 release window. I Wanna Dance with Somebody is indeed moving forward with Sony’s TriStar, which has reportedly prevailed in a bidding war against five other studios and streaming platforms, according to Deadline. Now, said studio is wasting little time with the…
23
Jul
Collaborate and listen, because Ice is back with a brand new invention. And that invention is a biopic where Dave Franco slips into Vanilla Ice’s borrowed hammer pants. The news, which came late Wednesday, confirmed Franco will play the infamous rapper in To the Extreme. Franco confirmed the news himself to Insider while also revealing the film is being imagined as a Disaster Artist and Ed Wood-like biopic about musician Robert Matthew Van Winkle’s life. That earlier 2017 film, which co-starred Franco, was written and directed by his brother James Franco, who also led the movie by playing Tommy Wiseau,…
10
Jul
Ethan Hawke headlines the biopic, Tesla, having transformed himself—mustache and all—into the once-overlooked, retroactively-revered early 20th century inventor, Nikola Tesla. The indie offering, directed and written by Michael Almereyda (Marjorie Prime, Experimenter), premiered this past January at the Sundance Film Festival, and will make its general release via IFC Films. Tesla might initially seem like a historical biopic that’s quickly revisiting a topical well, focused on the electrical engineering achievements of Tesla (who’s been portrayed in myriad film and television stints,) in his famous involvement in the electricity rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. After all, an impressively-cast movie…
08
Jun
Let’s get one thing clear right from the start: Shirley, the movie about acclaimed writer Shirley Jackson, is not a conventional biopic of the reclusive yet incisive author of The Haunting of Hill House and stories like “The Lottery.” The movie is based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, also called Shirley, and depicts a fictional battle of wills between Jackson, her husband Stanley Hyman, and the young couple who come to live with them when the husband takes a job as Hyman’s teaching assistant. “The idea was to do a non-traditional biopic, because I didn’t really want to…
