For those of you who don’t follow The Great White Way, the name Nina Arianda (Midnight in Paris) has been on the tips of tongues for quite some time, but now the Tony-winning actress (for her role in Venus in Fur) is teaming up with the multiple award-winning director of Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin, to star in the long-awaited Joplin, according to Deadline.
The film, which had been rumored to star the likes of Zooey Deschanel, Renee Zellweger, Amy Adams, and pop star Pink, focuses on the last six months of Janis Joplin’s life, wrought with flashbacks of the singer’s early days breaking into the music business.
Production may finally begin after a long twelve-year struggle to find a leading lady who can handle singing a whopping 21 best-known songs from the singer which will also be featured in the movie. This project comes courtesy of writer Mike Newman who spent many years teaching at NYU, but with the forces of Durkin and Arianda behind him, we’ll finally be able to see Joplin on the big screen.
Arianda earned her first Tony nomination after her 2011 turn in Born Yesterday (I saw the show’s final performance and she was amazing!), alongside funnyman Jim Belushi (According to Jim) and House actor Robert Sean Leonard. Durkin compares Arianda to the likes of Meryl Streep or Judy Holliday, and Newman adds about her role in Venus in Fur, “I‘ve never seen an actress walk on a stage and convey the duality of vulnerability with overheated sexuality, which is what Janis was all about.”
Newman’s arduous involvement with the development of the film comes with the rights from a contractual lock that he has on Joplin’s songs, Love, Janis, a collection of letters that her sister, Laura Joplin, published, as well as the David Dalton book Piece of My Heart, which he wrote when he traveled with Joplin during the last six months of her life on the road before her fatal drug overdose in 1970.
Since Joplin is such an icon of the music scene in her time, it’s been confirmed that Outkast singer Andre 3000 will appear as Jimi Hendrix in the film as well. However, news of other casting has not yet been confirmed.
Are you interested in seeing a film about Janis Joplin’s final months? Are you a fan of her music? Do you think that Broadway darling Arianda can handle taking on such an iconic role?
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