F. Gary Gray Helming Other Marvin Gaye Biopic

We've known about dueling Marvin Gaye biopics for two years now, but apparently there's a third. Variety reports of a film to be directed by F. Gary Gray (The Italian Job) and scripted by C. Gaby Mitchell (Blood Diamond) simply titled Marvin. It's possible, though, that this is the same film previously reported as D. Stevens' Marvin: The Life Story of Marvin Gaye, which was being written by Greg Guss and Robert Scharrer. The IMDb certainly thinks so.

Regardless of Gray's film's origins, his project still has a competitor in Sexual Healing, which will star Law & Order's Jesse L. Martin as Gaye and will co-star and be produced by James Gandolfini. There will be a difference between the two, at least. Sexual Healing only has access to Gaye's post-Motown music, so it will be focused on the singer's later years. Marvin, on the other hand, has finally secured the rights to Gaye's entire music catalog and will cover the man's life from beginning to end, when he was shot by his father in 1984.

Marvin currently has no star or studio, but producers David Foster (The Core) and Duncan McGillivray (formerly of historically film-friendly Bank of America) will be shopping the project to studios and financiers next week. With Sexual Healing still not in production (last we heard, it was to begin shooting in April), Marvin may still have a shot of beating it to theaters. And with Gray at the helm, with his music video background (TLC's "Waterfalls"), it seems to be in better hands.