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A documentary chronicling the murderous terror attack on the Nova Music Festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 will debut on Paramount+. The streamer announced on Thursday (May 16) that the See It Now Studios Original Documentary We Will Dance Again will get a worldwide premiere in the fall, a year after the surprise assault […]
Just six months remain before the world is changed “For Good.”
In anticipation of part 1 of Jon M. Chu’s upcoming Wicked movie musical, Universal Pictures shared an emotional clip recounting the journey to Wicked from the perspectives of Chu and stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.
“Whenever anyone asks me what’s the one movie you want to do,” mused Chu, who has previously helmed box-office smashes like 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, “If there was one, I’d always say it’d be Wicked.”
The fourth-longest-running Broadway show of all time, Wicked pulls inspiration from both the stage musical and the best-selling Gregory Maguire-penned novel of the same name. Grande, who recently topped the Billboard 200 with her Eternal Sunshine LP, is set to star as Glinda the Good Witch, with Erivo, a two-time Academy Award nominee, taking on the iconic role of Elphaba, also known as the Wicked Witch of the West.
“On my 25th birthday, I took myself to see the show,” Erivo reflected in the clip. “I’d never heard anything or seen anything like it. I remember it was a rainy night and I felt really alive. I felt like I was floating on air.”
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No stranger to musicals, Erivo has previously lent her talents to The Color Purple, for which she received the 2016 Tony Award for best leading actress in a musical. She also starred in the 2015 Royal Festival Hall production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and the 2016 Town Hall production of Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years. This year, the Emmy, Tony and Grammy winner can be seen in the Lincoln Center production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Of course, with starring turns in 2019’s Harriet and 2022’s Disney’s Pinocchio, Erivo has also made an impact on the silver screen.
Though she’s best known for Billboard Hot 100-topping hits like “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love),” Grande’s acting credits date back to 2008, when she made her Broadway debut in 13, a musical also penned by Brown, with whom Grande later collaborated on “Jason’s Song (Gave It Away)” from 2016’s Dangerous Woman LP.
“I had the incredible privilege of seeing the original Broadway cast of Wicked when I was 10, and I just felt an immediate bond,” Grande says in the video, before it cuts to an old media clip, in which she expresses her desire to play Glinda should Wicked every make it to the big screen. “It’s always been the thing I listen to when I’m nervous, when I’m needing an escape, when I need comfort. I went in for my first audition and I remember buzzing!”
The rest of the clip features behind-the-scenes footage of the film and clips from the phone calls in which Chu officially broke the casting news to Grande and Erivo. Chu gushed that Grande’s audition featured “an Ari that [he’d] never seen before,” while Erivo was “so raw and vulnerable [that] he couldn’t get her out of [his] head.”
Both Grande and Ervio tearfully and graciously accepted their respective offers to join the films’ illustrious cast, with the “7 Rings” singer crying, “Oh my God, thank you! I love [Glinda] so much, I’m gonna take such good care of her!”
“It’s been a really long journey here, and I’m really grateful for it,” says Erivo. “I never thought in my lifetime that I would get to be a part of something like this.”
The rest of the principal Wicked cast will feature Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible, Olivier winner Jonathan Bailey as Fiyero, Tony nominee Ethan Slater as Boq, Emmy nominee Bowen Yang as Pfannee and Emmy nominee Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard of Oz.
Wicked will be split into two separate movie musicals for the silver screen. The first film is slated to hit theaters on Thanksgiving (Nov. 27), with the second film following almost exactly a year later on Nov. 26, 2025. The film’s first trailer debuted during the 2024 Super Bowl, giving fans a taste of both the whimsical world of Oz and Erivo’s version of the iconic “Defying Gravity” closing riff popularized by Idina Menzel, who won the 2004 leading actress in a musical Tony for the original production of Wicked.
“I want people to see Wicked and experience it in a way they’ve never experienced before,” Chu proclaims at the end of the clip. “I want them to feel what I felt going into the theater for the first time. I want to make them laugh, to make them sing, to make them feel that after they’ve watched it, they’ve been changed for good.”
Watch Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo emotionally accept their Wicked castings below.
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Cyndi Lauper never considered another option. The flame-haired singer whose colorful sartorial flare and Betty Boop voice had music writers desperately searching for synonyms for “quirky” in the 1980s will tell her life’s story in the upcoming biopic Let the Canary Sing.
The feature-length film that debuted at last year’s Tribeca Festival in New York was directed by Emmy-winning documentarian Alison Ellwood (Laurel Canyon) and will debut on Paramount+ on June 4. “Over the years I’ve been asked to do a documentary about my life and work, but it never felt like the right time,” Lauper, 70, said in a statement about the film. “Until now. When I first met Alison Ellwood, I knew right away I could trust her to tell my story honestly, which was incredibly important to me, and she succeeded in that. I’d like to thank Alison, the producers, and all of the amazing documentary participants who agreed to be interviewed!”
The trailer for the doc dropped on Tuesday and it opens with a scene from the video for Lauper’s 1983 ballad “Time After Time,” in which the singer is seen schlepping her giant duffel as she leaves a trailer park. “Everyone always said, ‘what will you do if you fail?’ And all of a sudden we all heard it,” Lauper says in voiceover over the irresistible strains of her 1983 breakthrough hit, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
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The 90-second trailer takes us all the way back to little Cyndi’s Catholic school days, during which it became apparent, she says, “how stubborn I could be.” Singer/actor Billy Porter weighs in on Lauper’s embrace of queer culture in the sneak peek, noting that at that time, “queer people weren’t allowed to be queer and out. It was our allies having the conversation.”
The trailer also features Culture Club singer Boy George praising Lauper for doing whatever she wanted to and legendary R&B singer Patti LaBelle calling “Time After Time” one of her “favorite songs ever.”
Legacy Recordings will release a career-spanning companion album that takes listeners from the singer’s early days in the group Blue Angel (“I’m Gonna Be Strong”) through the global breakout success of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and other iconic hits such as “True Colors,” “I Drove All Night,” “Money Changes Everything,” “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough,” “She Bop,” “All Through the Night” and more.
Watch the trailer for Let the Canary Sing below.
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Although BTS‘ Suga has another year left on his mandatory South Korean military service stint, the K-pop superstar is still lighting up the charts from afar. On Tuesday (April 16), Trafalgar Releasing and HYBE announced that the limited run of the concert film from the singer’s alter ego, Agust D, set box office records in […]
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have been making beautifully morose music together for more than three decades. In addition to their longtime collaboration in Cave’s Bad Seeds band, the pair have also teamed up for a more than a dozen soundtrack score albums, including their new score for the Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black.
In keeping with their eternally bleak, theatrical vibe, the pair released their homage to late British R&B singer Winehouse on Thursday (April 11), “Song for Amy.” Like much of the score they wrote for the film — which opened in the U.K. on Friday (April 12) — the tribute track leans into a dramatic, emotional vibe, accented by a haunting flute and piano riff and Cave’s signature pleading vocals.
“You say it’s time/ For us to call it a day/ I will love you anyway/ You know that I don’t even care what they say/ I’ll still love you anyway, baby,” Cave sings emotionally as strings swell up and he adds the gut-punch lines, “Love gives everything/ Just to take it away/ And I’d give you anything for you to stay.” The somber 12-track score features 10 instrumental cues (with titles such as “Tattoo Parlour,” “At the Taxi,” “Snooker Hall” and “Soho To Glastonbury”) as well as the 3:19 “Song for Amy” and a 2:12 instrumental reprise of that track.
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“Nick and Warren were the only musicians in my mind to score Back to Black,” director said Sam Taylor-Johnson said in an earlier statement. “Over the years I’ve listened to everything they’ve composed and longed to realize the dream of working together. Their sensibility as well as understanding of this story has led to a profoundly deep and moving film score.”
Back to Black: Songs From the Original Motion Picture is due out on May 17 on UMR/Island Records, the same day the film opens in the U.S. The collection features classics from Thelonious Monk, The Specials, Little Anthony & the Imperials, The Shangri-Las, Billie Holiday, Donny Hathaway, Tony Bennett, Willie Nelson, Minnie Ripperton and others, as well as a handful of Winehouse’s most beloved songs, including “Rehab,” “Tears Dry on Their Own,” “Me & Mr. Jones,” “Back to Black,” “Fuck Me Pumps” and “Song For Amy.”
The movie‘s cast includes star Marisa Abela (Industry), as well as Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan) as father Mitch Winehouse and Jack O’Connell (Godless) as troubled husband Blake Fielder-Civil. Winehouse died in 2011 at 27 of an accidental alcohol overdose after years of substance use struggles.
Listen to “Song For Amy” below.
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The second installment of director Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon movie series will be accompanied by a five-track “inspired by” EP. Rebel Moon – Songs of the Rebellion is due out on April 5, with tracks from Jessie Reyez, Tainy, Tokischa, TOKiMONSTA, aespa, Black Coffee and Kordhell.
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The album will drop just before the April 19 Netflix release of Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, the sequel to the Justice League director’s 2023 futuristic space drama Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire.
“After being given the chance to watch the movie before it was out, it was very easy to connect the dots backwards and see myself in Kora” Reyez said in a statement in reference to the series’ main character, Kora/Arthelais, who leads fighters from across the galaxy in a battle against the oppressive Motherworld. “Personally, there’s not a lot of things I’m afraid of, but being absolutely vulnerable in love is definitely one of them. Kora has repeatedly been denied emotional and physical equanimity throughout her life, and when she is denied it again by [Charlie Hunnam’s character] Kai, she has yet another brick to add to her walls, and grows another layer on her thick skin. It was natural to resonate with that.”
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All of the songs on the EP are originals the artists wrote specifically for the film according to the release, with each song paired to a lead character that inspired it. “The artists’ rebellious personal touches on each single create a compelling sonic journey throughout the EP, curated to the film’s characters and emotions of strength, resilience, and empowerment,” the release said. “The collection of songs also features various genres representing different cultures from around the world. And similar to the warriors in Rebel Moon, artists also have to fight for their families, their communities, a dignified future, and their art.”
Check out the track list — including which character inspired each song — below.
“Child of Fire” – Jessie Reyez (inspired by Kora –protagonist played by Sofia Boutella)
“Jalo!” – Tokischa + Tainy (inspired by The Bloodaxes — Darrian and Devra Bloodaxe — played by Ray Fisher and Cleopatra Coleman)
“Die Trying” – aespa + TOKiMONSTA (inspired by Nemesis — played by Doona Bae)
“Ode to Ancestors” (feat. Djimon Hounsou) – Black Coffee (inspired by General Titus — played by Hounsou)
“Revolution” – Kordhell (inspired by Jimmy — voiced by Anthony Hopkins)
Fans will finally get to see Paul Simon dive into his songwriting legacy and the high points of his nearly seven-decade career in music when the biopic In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon hits streaming next month.
“People used to say, ‘Oh, you have your finger on the pulse,’” Simon says in voiceover in the 90-second trailer for the “definitive” musical doc chronicling the 82-year-old singer’s legendary career; the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and will bow as a two-part series on MGM+ on March 17 and 24. “No, I don’t have my finger on the pulse… I just have my finger out there and the pulse is running under,” Simon says.
In addition to taking viewers behind the scenes of the making of Simon’s 2023 album Seven Psalms, the Alex Gibney-directed doc promises to includes never-before-seen footage from throughout Simon’s storied career, from his days in Simon & Garfunkel to the global success of his landmark 1986 world music album Graceland.
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The opening montage says it all, bouncing from footage of a fresh-faced Simon at the beginning of his career in the mid-1950s, to his historical free 1981 Concert in Central Park benefit show with former partner Art Garfunkel for 500,000 and the sessions for the meditative Psalms song cycle.
“I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a singer and songwriter,” says Simon, author of such indelible hits as “Homeward Bound,” “The Sound of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” “Loves Me Like a Rock” and the South Africa-inspired Graceland, which won the 1987 Grammy for album of the year.
His collaboration with Garfunkel — which began when they were teenagers performing as Tom & Jerry — spawned dozens of hits and classic albums during the 1960s until their acrimonious split in 1970. The pair reunited several times over the next three decades for one-off shows and a 1993 world tour, though they would never again record a full album together.
“Artie, that was a good friendship,” he says lovingly about Garfunkel in the trailer. “We thought we should express what our generation felt.”
Watch the trailer for In Restless Dreams below.
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Saweetie‘s 2021 hit “Best Friend” is the perfect soundtrack the first trailer for the upcoming Zac Efron buddy comedy Ricky Stanicky. The initial look at the Prime Video flick directed by Peter Farrelly (Green Book) that also stars John Cena, Jermaine Fowler, Andrew Santino and William H. Macy — cued to the rapper/singer’s bouncy track, […]
Jennifer Lopez suffers from some serious love overload in the first trailer for her upcoming Amazon original film This is Me… Now: A Love Story. The two-minute clip that dropped on Wednesday morning (Jan. 17) gives a peek at what looks like an epic tale of Lopez’s eternal search for love, complete with an all-star supporting cast that includes Fat Joe, Trevor Noah, Kim Petras, Post Malone, Keke Palmer, Sofia Vergara, Jenifer Lewis, Jay Shetty, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sadhguru, Derek Hough and more.
“I know what they say about me… about hopeless romantics,” Lopez says in voiceover amid a swell of dramatic strings and a shot of the singer/actress first sharing a passionate kiss on the ground and then on having her veil lifted on her wedding day. The she adds, “…that we’re weak. And I’m not weak.”
A quick-cut of Lopez walking solemnly in a steamy subway, staring blankly into a firepit and racing across a lake on a motorcycle before crashing out ends with the ominous warning: “Not all love stories have a happy ending.”
Longtime pal rapper Fat Joe then pops into frame as Lopez’s cozy sweater-wearing therapist before a roomful of her pals stage an intervention, telling Jen that they fear the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” singer might be a sex addict. The preview features footage from the just-released movie musical-style video for the earworm single “Can’t Get Enough” — the first taste of JLo’s upcoming This Is Me… Now album — as part of a film a release describes as a, “narrative-driven cinematic odyssey, steeped in mythological storytelling and personal healing.”
The “genre-bending” original project promises to showcase “her journey to love through her own eyes. With fantastical costumes, breathtaking choreography, and star-studded cameos, this panorama is an introspective retrospective of Jennifer’s resilient heart.” The trailer also finds Lopez in a support group describing her childhood sharing a room with her sister, lying awake at night wondering how anyone can get shut-eye “when your heart never goes to sleep.”
The narrative-driven short film from Amazon MGM Studios was directed by Dave Meyers (Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift) and written by Lopez and Matt Walton based on a story by the singer, Meyers and Chris Shafer; it is due out on Prime Video globally on the same day as the album, Feb. 16.
In keeping with Meyers’ legendarily over-the-top, effects-laden clips for artists including Harry Styles (“Adore You”), Grande (“No Tears Left to Cry”) and Swift (“Me!”), the This Is Me film preview features futuristic landscapes, elaborate, Gene Kelly-esque dance sequences and a parade of famous faces throughout.
The cast also includes husband Ben Affleck, as well as Trevor Jackson, Paul Raci, Bella Gagliano, Brandon Delsid, Ashley Versher, Malcolm Kelner, Alix Angelis, Danielle Larracuente and Matthew Law.
In an Instagram post featuring the trailer, Lopez wrote, “I have not been this nervous, excited, scared and thrilled to share something with you in years!! The story of the journey from This Is Me…Then to This Is Me…Now is the most personal thing I’ve ever done.”
Check out the This Is Me… Now: A Love Story trailer below.
From Barbie: The Album to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, soundtracks tied to blockbuster films have dominated much of the year. As 2023 draws to a close, Quincy Jones, Scott Sanders and Larry Jackson hope their new expanded soundtrack, released last Friday (Dec. 15) for the forthcoming Color Purple movie musical (which hits theaters Dec. 25), marks a new era for R&B soundtracks and continues the healing Alice Walker sparked with her paramount novel 41 years ago.
Walker’s story has undergone countless iterations over the past four decades: an Oscar-nominated Steven Spielberg-helmed film in 1985, a Tony-winning Broadway musical in 2005, a Grammy-winning Broadway revival in 2015, and now a new movie musical directed by Grammy nominee Blitz Bazawule. Led by Fantasia, Danielle Brooks, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo and Halle Bailey, the new film offers a fresh perspective on the timeless narrative, as evidenced by its accompanying star-studded, globe-traversing Inspired By soundtrack. The new set is comprised of 21 new songs inspired by the film, in addition to 16 tracks taken from the Broadway musical. The genre-spanning set is heavily rooted in R&B — a conscious decision given the way R&B has been counted out by major labels over the past decade.
According to Sanders, who produced the 2005 Broadway musical and serves as executive producer on both the 2023 film and its soundtrack (released through Warner Bros. Pictures/WaterTower Music/gamma), Warner Bros. was always planning to do a soundtrack. “We knew it would be an opportune moment for them to add another dimension to The Color Purple brand extension,” he remarks.
And that’s precisely what the new soundtrack is. As cinematic universes continue to dominate mainstream media, The Color Purple has been crafting its own interconnected web of stories for 40 years — and the new soundtrack became a holy site for reunions and healing among the producers, artists, and cast.
The idea of a proper Inspired By soundtrack started to take form during an April lunch between Sanders and Jackson after the gamma. CEO had seen the film and felt its impact on early audiences. “Whatever veneer of impenetrable stoicism I had at that time, [the film] pierced it,” Jackson reflects. “To me, the great Black films are the ones [where] people are talking back to the screen, they’re applauding, there’s conversations going on, and whooping and hollering. It’s an interactive spirit, and this film has that.”
For Jackson, it was Fantasia’s performance that most moved him. The Billboard Hot 100-topping R&B star leads the film as Celie Harris-Johnson, a role for which she has already earned a Golden Globe nomination. Almost 20 years ago, Fantasia captivated America’s hearts and won the fourth season of American Idol. Shortly after her victory, she headed to the studio to record her debut LP, a Grammy-nominated effort on which Jackson would serve as A&R. That album featured singles such as “Truth Is” and the Missy Elliott-assisted “Free Yourself,” a collaboration that now has a three-way connection to The Color Purple universe.
“That was a lot for me at that time of my life — [Fantasia and I] were basically the same age and really related to what needed to be achieved,” Jackson reflects. “I was saying to Missy Elliott last night, she really helped me craft the sound for Fantasia’s first album.”
On the soundtrack, Elliott appears on two remixes: the Shenseea-featuring “Hell No,” a song from the original musical, and “Keep It Movin’,” a new addition to the musical co-written by Bailey. Like most of the artists involved in the soundtrack, Jackson says that the “Work It” rapper decided to join the project after a private screening of the film. It’s the same way he landed Alicia Keys, who co-wrote and co-produced the soundtrack’s lead single (“Lifeline”), Johntá Austin, whose “When I Can’t Do Better” marks his first collaboration with Mary J. Blige since their iconic “Be Without You,” and The-Dream. Fresh off a Grammy win for his work on Beyoncé’s Renaissance, The-Dream could be headed down to the Oscars thanks to “Superpower,” a new song he penned for the Color Purple end credits.
Often, end-credit songs are performed by artists who don’t appear in the film — but in the case of The Color Purple, everyone was in early agreement that Fantasia was the only correct choice to belt the closing ballad. For one, both the song and the movie are Fantasia’s formal re-entry into the public eye as a performer, but her specific voice and story were the best vehicle for The-Dream’s lyrics. “This is older Celie singing to her younger self — it is a quintessential ‘it gets better’ song,” Sanders gushes. “It’s so f—king moving. I can’t stop listening to it. I cry when I listen to Fantasia’s rendition.” For “Superpower,” Jackson told The-Dream, “I just want a spiritual, a song that will move on far past our time. Something that will be sung in high school graduations.”
Although the SAG-AFTRA strike almost prevented Fantasia from recording the song, the timing worked out and she was able to cut her vocal in time. Given that Fantasia played Celie on Broadway for eight months during the Broadway show’s original run, her rendition of the end-credits song is the kind of full-circle moment that most artists dream of. “Superpower” is a rousing song – one in which she deftly displays the expanse of vocal range and control – and a potential comeback vehicle for not just Fantasia, but the R&B soundtrack in general. In crafting The Color Purple (Music From and Inspired By), Sanders, Jackson and film director Blitz Bazawule drew inspiration from iconic R&B film soundtracks of decades past, including Sparkle, The Bodyguard, Boomerang and Waiting to Exhale.
“It had always been on my bucket list to do a soundtrack that felt like the great soundtracks of the 1970s, or the ones in the ‘90s,” Jackson says. “I’ve been involved in a few of them, but Clive [Davis] was always the one who was leading it. It never was something that I was driving with my own personal taste and sensibility, and this was an opportunity for that.”
The Color Purple soundtrack bookmarks a year that began with troubling layoffs for one of the most storied labels in Black music history. In the middle of Black History Month (Feb. 16), Billboard reported that Motown was set to be reintegrated under Capitol Music Group – hence the layoffs – making for a less-than-preferable outcome after the company attempted a run as a standalone label back in 2021. Despite a precarious start to the year, R&B artists have once again forged a spot at the forefront of the mainstream, thanks to acts such as SZA, Victoria Monét, Usher, Coco Jones and more. It’s a level of momentum, Sanders and Jackson hope to continue with their generation-bridging Color Purple tracklist.
In addition to the cast, The Color Purple soundtrack features contributions from Jennifer Hudson, Keyshia Cole, Mary J. Blige, Mary Mary, H.E.R., Ludmilla, Megan Thee Stallion and more. Like Fantasia, Jennifer Hudson’s track marks another full-circle moment for The Color Purple universe. Hudson took home the 2017 Grammy Award for best musical theater album thanks to the Broadway revival, and, of course, she was a contestant on the same season of American Idol as Fantasia. In another connection, Hudson herself also starred in a blockbuster Black movie musical that hit theaters on Christmas Day: 2006’s Dreamgirls, for which she won the Academy Award for best supporting actress.
Although Walker’s novel specifically highlights the stories of Black American women in the American South during the early 20th century, the new Color Purple soundtrack both globalizes those narratives and translates them to contemporary times. Megan Thee Stallion’s remix of “Hell No” — a selection from the original musical – carries a special weight given the way she has refused to let misogynoir drown out her voice over the past few years. Jamaican cross-genre star Shenseea appears on a different “Hell No” remix, and her inclusion on the tracklist – alongside Brazilian singer-songwriter Ludmilla – highlights how The Color Purple’s narrative resonates with Black women around the world.
“Every day was meeting to reaffirm why I’m doing this, to remind myself the importance of this work,” explains director Blitz Bazawule. “It’s daunting. You’re talking about a legacy that you don’t approach if you don’t have anything real to contribute.” Bazawule aimed to contribute new perspectives of childhood and Celie’s inner dialogue in his version of The Color Purple. In translating a Broadway play to the silver screen, Bazawule was pushed to think about which characters and moments in the plot needed songs. “Keep It Movin’,” co-written by Bailey and Grammy-winning songwriting duo Nova Wav, was one of those songs. “Nettie’s character, as I saw it, needed to impart to Celie some level of confidence that will stay with her sister before they reconnect at the very end,” Bazawule says. “[The song] shows a young girl’s innocence which will very soon be snatched away quite violently. I need that moment to be memorable and really reflect the love the sisters have for each other.”
Bailey, who starred as the titular Little Mermaid earlier this year, is, of course, one-half of the Grammy-nominated sister duo Chloe x Halle. The “Angel” singer drew from her relationship with her sister for “Keep It Movin’,” a dynamic that exemplifies the symbiotic healing nature of The Color Purple soundtrack. As artists completed their contributions to the project, they experienced moments of healing themselves. According to Bazawule, those moments occurred throughout filming, spurred by the omnipresence of faith and gospel music on set. Gospel music is a clear throughline between the original music, the Inspired By soundtrack, and the way the musical’s songs were reworked for the film.
“Gospel is the foundation. When you think about how our version of The Color Purple functions, which is the oscillation between joy and pain and turning our pain into power, it’s the definition of gospel,” remarks Bazawule. “You don’t have anything without gospel, so, for us, it was central to how we advanced everything. I also was very clear that I’d have to split my musical journey into 3 three parts: gospel, blues and jazz.” To bring a more cinematic, gospel-infused feel to the original Broadway music, Bazawule tagged in Billboard chart-topping gospel star Ricky Dillard; He also recruited Keb’ Mo’ to bring in the blues, and Christian McBride for jazz. He even made sure his DP (Dan Lausten) and production designer (Paul D. Austerberry) got an authentic Black church experience. With both Fantasia and Domingo regularly leading the cast and crew in prayer, The Color Purple transformed into “spiritual work that shows up in the amount of healing that a lot of us went through making this film,” says Bazawule.
“You cannot work on The Color Purple without understanding what anointing looks like,” Bazawule asserts. “When those singers open their mouths, that’s church talking. That was very clear and it stayed critical up until the end.”
Just days before The Color Purple is set to open in theatres, a Hollywood Reporter piece exploring the hesitancy of studios to promote movie musicals as musicals started to make the rounds online. Black movie musicals are few and far between, especially when holiday films and biopics are removed, and The Color Purple is hoping to dispel the notion that audiences aren’t interested in seeing musicals on the big screen.
“I hope [The Color Purple] opens the door to many more and I hope directors and studios take more chances with Black movie musicals,” muses Bazawule. “Again, when it comes to music, we are unmatched, so you just have to find the narratives. I hope and pray our movie will move the needle.”
