'The Color Purple': The Hollywood Musical
Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Casting, RumorMonger, Steven Spielberg, Remakes and Sequels
Here I was thinking that this whole movie into musical and then back into a movie trend had finally come to an end. How wrong I was. The MTV movie blog recently spoke with former American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino and according to her, Oprah Winfrey is planning to produce a big-budget movie musical of The Color Purple. The musical will use the Broadway adaptation of Spielberg's 1985 film as a blueprint and Barrino told MTV, "That's going to happen and I'm going to do it."The original feature film was based on the novel by Alice Walker about the struggles of a young black woman in early 20th century America. The film was a big Oscar contender, but ending up losing most of the awards to the more 'colonial style' of Out of Africa. Just on a side note, it still kills me to this day that Whoopi Goldberg didn't win for her performance as Celie. Instead, she won for the vastly inferior romance, Ghost -- but I'm getting a little off topic.
The Broadway show premiered back in 2005, and Barrino took over the main role of Celie last April. Barrino is planning on taking some time off to work on her own music now that the run of the show has ended, but she won't stay gone long. Barrino tells MTV, "They're going to work with me. They don't have to [but] that's a favor, working with someone like Miss Oprah who's so talented and amazing - It's a blessing." It might be blessing for her, but I'm just not convinced that it's a great idea to begin with. How about you?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-06-2008 @ 8:39PM
Kaeli said...
When it comes to screen-to-stage-to-screen-again adaptations, I think this one's a worthy contender. The score is fantastic, and with musicals faring pretty well at the box office (a welcome trend), I think there's definitely an audience out there for this one. It's a really solid piece, and I highly recommend it.
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3-06-2008 @ 10:49PM
JKE said...
Can someone please stop Oprah and her campaign of cultural ebola?
I mean, I loved Oprah back in the day, but its like she's on a one woman crusade to produce complete crap in every medium possible. Beloved. They're Eyes Were Watching God. Nearly every book she's put on her book club. And lest we forget, she's solely responsible for "Dr." Phil and the increased public spotlight of Rachel Ray.
And as beautiful and powerful as the book and original movie of The Color Purple is, the musical was beyond abysmal. Thankfully I haven't been subjected to it in person, but i've listened to the soundtrack and seen clips. The music/lyrics were written by pop/r&b/contemporary artists who had no idea what they were doing making a musical.
If you're going to make a movie from something from the '05 Broadway season, do Light in the Piazza or 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. As far as movie-musical-movies go, I'd rather see Thoroughly Modern Millie turned back into a movie before Color Purple.
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3-11-2008 @ 12:53PM
leeng said...
I think its a great idea Fantasia is sure worthy of this part being that she brought in millions before she hit the stage good work Oprah keep it up a worthy show worth seeing
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