In one of the more interesting ideas I’ve heard for a film today, Elizabeth Banks is set to star in and produce Paramount Player’s Queen For A Day, based on Chris Lee’s Daily Beast story “When Prince Made a Chambermaid His Queen for a Day’.
Flora Greeson has been assigned to rewrite the first draft of the script which follows the chaos that occurred in 1986 when Warner Bros hatched a contest to draw attention to Prince’s Purple Rain follow-up Under The Cherry Moon. The studio staged Win A Date With Prince, an MTV contest in which the 10,000th caller won a date with the rock star. Actually, more than a date: the studio would stage a premiere of Prince’s film in the winner’s hometown, followed by a concert toplined by Prince and The Revolution.
The winner was Lisa Barber, a young lady in Sheridan, Wyoming who cleaned hotels and was a big Motley Crue fan. The movie is inspired by an article about the Cinderella story date, but the movie will be about how the event changed the lives of two very different women – the Manhattan PR exec responsible for the event’s success and the shy, awkward contest winner from Wyoming, whose town becomes the unexpected nexus of all things Prince for one unforgettable night.
Prince himself will not be played by an actor but his presence will hover through the film. The movie will focus on the effort that went into organizing an event that brought the purple-clad rock icon to a small cowboy town and established his date as a reluctant media sensation.
