Whitney Houston’s life story will receive the big screen treatment in a film backed by Clive Davis and the Houston Estate.
Currently titled, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” the movie will track Houston’s journey from obscurity to superstar while “being very frank about the price” of fame.
Stella Meghie of “The Photograph” is in advanced talks to direct, while Academy Award-winning screenwriter and producer Anthony McCarten (“The Two Popes,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Theory of Everything”) has agreed to pen the screenplay.
Houston’s sister-in-law Pat Houston – on behalf of the Houston Estate – is signed on as a producer, along with Davis, Larry Mestel on behalf of Primary Wave Music (also a partner of the Houston Estate), Denis O’Sullivan and McCarten.
The project was first discussed in April 2019 when Davis approached McCarten with the idea of a biopic. The film will be financed independently and is not currently affiliated with a studio.
"From all my personal and professional experience with Whitney from her late teenage years to her tragic premature death, I know the full Whitney Houston story has not yet been told,” Davis said. “I am so glad that Anthony McCarten has committed to a no-holds-barred, musically rich screenplay that finally reveals the whole Whitney whose vocal genius deeply affected the world while she fiercely battled the demons that were to be her undoing.”
Pat Houston added in part that, “Whitney’s legacy deserves only the best that can be given. I stand with the hearts of these partners being the chosen ones to produce a film that’s uplifting and inspiring to all that loved her.”
Houston, who sold more than 200 million records worldwide and was the most awarded female artist of all time before her 2012 death, also received the documentary treatment with 2018's "Whitney."
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