Zendaya’s Ronettes singer biopic has been in development for years, but a big attachment puts the film back on track.
Coming from A24 and New Regency, Euphoria and Dune star, Zendaya, will portray Ronettes singer Ronnie Spector in the upcoming movie, Be My Baby. The film will be based on “Be My Baby,” the book Spector wrote with Vince Waldron. This project was first announced back in 2020, just after the star won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her work on her controversial HBO series. The movie is still chugging along as the production has just landed a big name to helm the film.
According to Deadline, Moonlight director Barry Jenkins is now attached to direct Be My Baby. Zendaya and Jenkins reportedly had been looking to work on a project together for some time and this opportunity arose as both shared a vision for the story of Spector’s life that they’re interested in bringing to audiences.
Ronnie Spector was the lead singer of The Ronettes, one of the most popular groups of the 1960s who were famous for songs such as “Be My Baby”, “Baby, I Love You”, “(The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up”, “Walking in the Rain”, and more. The group was signed by famed American record producer (and later convicted murderer) Phil Spector, and the pair later fell in love and got married, but Ronnie soon realized that she’d made a horrible mistake when she woke up to the sounds of bars being installed on the windows of their mansion. After being subjected to years of psychological torment and threats of murder, not to mention being forbidden to perform, Ronnie escaped one night with the help of her mother and went on to experience a career resurgence and later won a court battle against Phil Spector regarding unpaid royalties for the music of The Ronettes. Deadline states that Ronnie Spector personally signed off on Zendaya playing her in the film and that early conversations are happening with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury to write the script.
Jenkins recently helmed the multi-million dollar Disney film Mufasa: The Lion King, which was a major change of pace for the indie director. Although many claimed he did the franchise film for a paycheck, the director explained it was the script that won him over. He explained, “About 40 pages in, I turned to Lulu [Wang] and I said, ‘Holy shit, this is good’. As I kept reading, I got further away from the side of my brain that said, ‘Oh, a filmmaker like you doesn’t make a film like this,’ and allowed myself to get to the place where these characters, this story, is amazing.
