Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg are taking on Alice Walker’s classic 1982 novel The Color Purple and making it a movie musical in 2023! Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for the newest adaptation, which will hit North American theaters on Christmas Day. The film opens internationally on January 18, 2024.
Based on the 1982 novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple focuses on Celie, a Black woman, living in the South in the early 20th century, who is repressed and abused. Steven Spielberg directed and produced a movie adaptation of the novel in 1985, starring Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Laurence Fishburn. The film received 11 Academy Award nominations.
The trailer highlights the closeness between the women at the heart of the story, with tear-jerking vocals and a complicated feeling of joy and sorrow. American Idol winner Fantasia reprises her Broadway role as Celie, making her major motion picture debut.
The 2023 film had a massive impact on Fantasia. In a conversation with Oprah Winfrey she said The Color Purple changed her because it allowed her to forgive. “People coming to this movie will be healed because I was healed,” she said.
Fantasia’s not the only recognizable cast member on set. Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black) joins the cast as Sofia. The actor has already earned a Tony nomination for the role in the 2016 Broadway show. Taraji P. Henson plays Shug Avery, Colman Domingo plays Mister, H.E.R. plays Squeak, Halle Bailey plays Young Nettie, Corey Hawkins plays Harpo and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays Mama.
Winfrey, a fellow producer in the 2023 musical adaptation, spoke about the need to retell The Color Purple story in 2023: “As long there is a need for self-discovery, self-empowerment, as long as there is a need for victory in someone’s life, as long as there is a need for people to know what it feels like to be loved up and to be made full and hold to somebody else’s love, there will be a need for The Color Purple.”
