Stephen Bray: Last News

Taraji P. Henson has signed on to star alongside H.E.R. and Corey Hawkins in Blitz Bazawule’s (Black Is King) adaptation of The Color Purple for Warner Bros., Deadline has confirmed.

Warner Bros. PIctures’ The Color Purple will make its streaming debut on Max on February 16.

Director Steven Spielberg’s 1985 version of Alice Walker’s classic, “The Color Purple,” has always been heavily debated. Many knock it for being too tidy and toning down the lesbian love story at its heart. Others, though, consider it a classic and a film that has withstood the test of time a lot better than the movie it lost the Best Picture Oscar to, “Out of Africa.”

Hello and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline.

Oprah Winfrey, was even the Queen of Talk.And the very same year, Stephen Bray — executive music producer of the new “Color Purple” movie musical that opens on Christmas Day — scored his first hits with the future Queen of Pop, Madonna, as co-writer of both “Into the Groove” and “Angel.”But Bray and Madonna shared a different kind of rhythmic history even before that — when they were both living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.“I used to play percussion in some of the dance classes that she was in,” Bray told The Post. “And then she moved to New York and was playing drums for [the band] Breakfast Club in ’79.

The Color Purple often succeeds as a thoughtful fusion of two other adaptations of Alice Walker’s landmark novel that still confidently hums its own tune.In shakier moments, though, confidence gives way to nostalgia, when the film hammers home its reinterpretations of quotable scenes and dialogue from the Quincy Jones-produced, Steven Spielberg-directed 1985 adaptation with an insistence that borders on flashing “Hey, remember this?” in bold type onscreen.Creating and saying something new with such proven material, while also purposely coaxing audience sentiment for a beloved original, surely posed a formidable challenge for Bazawule and company. And having Jones, Spielberg, and Oprah Winfrey — the big guns and big breakout from the 1985 film — onboard as producers must have eased and complicated the gig in unfathomable ways.Oprah and Jones also had a hand in the original Broadway musical adaptation, which has spun off its own lore and legacy, and adds another meta layer of pop-lit gloss to what this film aims to freshly reinterpret.The stage musical — with a book by Marsha Norman, and lyrics and music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray — has amassed its own roster of breakout stars, including American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who made her 2007 Broadway debut stepping into the lead role of Celie, and Orange Is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks, Tony-nominated for playing Sofia opposite Cynthia Erivo in the 2015 Broadway revival.Barrino and Brooks reprise their respective roles here with a lived-in grace and fortitude that does freshly illuminate Walker’s moving narrative, the lifeblood that courses through every iteration.

Fantasia Barrino, “The Little Mermaid” star Halle Berry and five-time Grammy winner H.E.R. to bring the belting in “The Color Purple,” the new movie musical adaption of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that opens in theaters on Christmas Day.But Oscar and Emmy-nominated actress Taraji P. Henson also flexes some surprise vocal chops as blues singer Shug Avery.And Executive Music Producer Stephen Bray already envisioned the former “Empire” diva in the role when she came to see the “Color Purple” musical on Broadway in 2005.“We were sitting together, and at intermission I said, ‘You know, you’d make a great Shug Avery,’ ” Bray — who co-wrote the songs for both 2005’s original stage production and its 2015 revival — told The Post.

Culturally, “The Color Purple” is many different things to many people. To some, it’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel of the same name by Alice Walker, the 1985 adaptation of that novel by Steven Spielberg, and more recently, it’s the 2005 musical with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor The late great songwriter Allee Willis was celebrated Wednesday night with a fashion show and party benefiting the Willis Wonderland Foundation. Willis, whose credits included the Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You,” better known as the “Friends” theme song, Earth Wind and Fire’s “September” (yesterday was the 21st) and a gaggle of disco-era hits, started the foundation to support the arts in underserved communities. She passed away from a cardiac event in 2019 at age 72. “She was a visual artist, performer, collector, party thrower extraordinaire with a whole amusement park full of kitsch-tastic colorful fashions,” Willis’ partner and the foundation’s CEO Prudence Fenton said. “Everything she did was all about making people happy. She lived to inspire others to express their own inner and outer creativity in every way. Creating art and music makes life worth living.”

The royally enjoyable cast of Signature Theatre’s The Color Purple (★★★★★) forges a chain of love with no weak links in Timothy Douglas’ knockout staging of the musical based on Alice Walker’s novel and the acclaimed 1985 motion picture.The show marks a milestone for Signature, which, according to artistic director Matthew Gardiner, had developed plans a decade ago for a take on the musical, fresh off a two-year Broadway run of the original Tony-winning production.But those plans were scuttled due to John Doyle’s 2015 Broadway revival starring powerhouses Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Hudson, and Danielle Brooks.Eventually that production made its way to D.C. in the modified form of a Broadway touring company which, frankly, left a lot of the meat of this turbulent, decades-spanning drama still on the bone.