Iconic Pop & R&B star, Whitney Houston, is headed for the big-screen treatment. It has been announced that Whitney Houston Estate, Primary Wave, and Grammy-winning music producer Clive Davis are teaming up for a biopic about the songstress called, I Wanna Dance With Somebody.
Scripting and producing the project is Anthony McCarten, a writer who is no stranger to true stories since he’s the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind the biographical films The Two Popes, Darkest Hour, Bohemian Rhapsody, and The Theory Of Everything. Stella Meghie, who directed this year’s critically well-received The Photograph, is in current negotiations to helm the project.
McCarten’s incredible biopic track record helped him win the support of the Houston family, after the late Houston’s mentor Davis reached out to McCarten last April. Since the Whitney Houston Estate is on board, the film will have the benefit of the use of Houston’s many hit songs. Simply put, this biopic is the real deal and, if done right, has huge potential. McCarten, as a writer, has inadvertently helped numerous of his true life films win big at the Oscars. Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury), Gary Oldman (Winston Churchill), and Eddie Redmayne (Stephen Hawkins) won lead actor Oscars three years straight, and Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins were just both nominated for Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, respectively.
The producers describe their vision of the film as a “joyous, emotional and heart-breaking celebration of the life and music of the greatest female R&B pop vocalist of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical superstardom. While being very frank about the price that super-stardom exacted, it will be both the rich and complex saga of the search for the perfect marriage between song and singer and audience, and at the same time the moving tale of a simple Jersey girl trying to find her way back home.” While they will have to dive into the tragic ending that saw her passing away far too soon in 2012 after a lengthy battle with drug abuse, the film will mostly focus on her triumphs and treat the more unsavory bits of her life with class and grace.
While Houston is the most awarded female music artist of all time, selling more than 200 million records worldwide, she also transitioned into film. 1992’s The Bodyguard was a huge box office and soundtrack success, grossing $411 million worldwide on a $25 million budget and selling 45 million copies of its soundtrack worldwide, making it the highest-selling soundtrack of all-time. The album was bolstered by her cover of “I Will Always Love You”, which spent 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Houston followed that film with 1995’s Waiting To Exhale, which proved to be another box office and soundtrack crossover success, grossing $81.4 million worldwide on a $16 million budget and selling 7 million copies of the film’s soundtrack. Houston saw moderate success co-starring with Denzel Washington in the remake of The Preacher’s Wife which grossed $48.1 million and also spawned a soundtrack that became the best-selling gospel album of all-time with 6 million copies sold worldwide. Houston last appeared on the big screen in the remake of Sparkle in 2012, which was finished three months before her death and released in her memory.
