Following the success of Aretha Franklin's latest studio effort, which netted her highest debut charting album, "Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics," the Queen of Soul is finally ready to shift her attention to the production of her much anticipated biopic.
And despite Franklin’s previous desire to cast Oscar Award-winning actress Hally Berry to portray an adult version of herself in the film, she has also named two other potential favorites to her wish list, during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“There’s several people that we’re considering. Audra McDonald is one. Audra has a great voice. And she’s Broadway-oriented, but she is an actress,” she noted during the interview. “The question where Audra’s concern is whether or not she could deal with soul as I sing it. But she’s an actress, and so it would be her job to meet that challenge…she just won a Tony for ‘Lady Day,’ so it’s very possible. It depends on how she feels about it.”
“And then there is the possibility of Jennifer Hudson,” Franklin continued. “And there’s the director’s book of names and faces that I’m not aware of and don’t know about. And then there’s the possibility of someone from the church, maybe. An unknown.”
Franklin told the WSJ three deals are currently in negotiation in relation to the biopic and “very, very close to signature.”
In 2011 the singer explained to Wendy Williams why the project had stalled in its development.
“For the last four years, we’ve been talking about [the film], and I have had a number of offers. Unfortunately, they were not good offers,” she said. “Now, we have something on the table. They have all of the financing on one project and the second project, and he’s in the process of writing things for me to approve on the tele-film.”
Check out more of Aretha Franklin’s Wall Street Journal interview in the clip above.
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