Alice Walker’s timeless novel The Color Purple returns to the big screen for the first time in four decades.
Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated 1985 adaptation follows a young black woman named Celie (then played by Whoopi Goldberg) who tries to find her identity in rural Georgia while dealing with her abusive father and the prejudices of the antebellum South gets by and forms a close bond with jazz singer Shug. A stage music adaptation of Walker’s book premiered on Broadway in 2005, with Celie being played throughout the run by the likes of LaChanze and Cynthia Erivo. Now, in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of director Blitz Bazawule’s (Christmas Day) musical, R&B star Fantasia Barrino, who appeared on the show on Broadway from 2007-2008 and on the national tour two years later, takes on the role of Celie, with Taraji P. Henson as Shug. Watch the first official trailer of The Color Purple below.
Producer Oprah Winfrey and director Bazawule exclusively shared the trailer during a virtual event on May 22. The footage features the film’s epic cast in a time-spanning narrative filled with lush fantasy and dream sequences, and imagery of young Celie (played by “The Little Mermaid” Breakout (Halle Bailey) juxtaposed with an older Celie escaping her present and sinks into heart-rending musical reverie.
During the trailer’s release, Winfrey promised a “reimagined, bold new version of ‘The Color Purple’ nearly 40 years later,” adding, “As long as there’s a need for people to feel what it means to be loved… there will be that too.” be a requirement for “The Color Purple”. Our iteration comes out on December 25th and I believe that going forward this story will just grow and never get old.”
Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, Danielle Brooks, HER, Ciara, Bailey, Louis Gosset Jr., David Alan Grier, Aunjanue Ellis and many more round out the star-studded cast. Previously, Bazawule directed portions of Beyoncé’s visual album Black Is King and the acclaimed 2018 Ghanaian feature film The Burial of Kojo. 2023’s The Color Purple will be produced by Winfrey, Spielberg, Quincy Jones and Scott Sanders, and will be shot by Guillermo del Toro regular Dan Laustsen.
American Idol breakthrough Barrino has long been a advocate for abuse survivors and previously revealed her own experiences of sexual assault as a teenager. “I experienced sexual assault as a young girl. I come from domestic violence. And I learned through this film that not only can I heal, I can also forgive,” Winfrey recalled, as Barrino said in early conversations about the production.
Winfrey said Bazawule was “like the fifth or sixth director” they’ve spoken to about directing the film. “Blitz presented these storyboards and five minutes after zooming with him, I texted [producer] Scott Sanders and everyone else: ‘Oh my god, that’s the guy.’”
“These are things you dream about and then they happen,” Bazawule said. “The obvious instinct is to say, ‘That can’t be me,'” he said. “The bar is so high… But first I read the script and I said, ‘I get it.’ [screenwriter] Marcus [Gardley] “Here they try to do it,” and of course I sat with Steven and Oprah and Scott Sanders and the Warner Bros. team and it was clear that they were really going to allow us to redo the canon of The Color Purple expand first started with the question, “How do we create internal headspace for Celie?”
Bazawule added, “I wanted to create the most epic and bold visuals… Someone called it ‘magic realism,’ so that’s kind of what we got into.” He said he wanted “a level of parallelism between the music and create the character” drawing on the greats of gospel and blues to fuse the songs with the images. “When you put it all together, you have a tapestry that is beautiful, that brings joy… that is healing.”
Written by Marcus Gardley (“Maid”, “The Chi”), who is adapting the stage adaptation with a book by Marsha Norman and music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray.
With Spielberg’s Color Purple garnering 11 Oscar nominations, including best picture, Warner Bros. certainly has a serious contender in its sights here.