Zendaya In Talks To Play Singer Ronnie Spector In A24 Film Biopic

Deadline is reporting that A24 is putting together a film package that will have Emmy-winning Euphoria star Zendaya attached to play singer Ronnie Spector in a film about her life. The film will be based on Be My Baby, the book Spector wrote with Vince Waldron. I’m hearing that early conversations are happening with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury to write the script.

The film will be produced by Marc Platt, who is producing the Rob Marshall-directed The Little Mermaid, Dear Evan Hansen and Wicked. Jonathan Greenfield and Ronnie Spector will be the exec producers and Zendaya will also be involved as a producer as all these deals come together.

Spector chose Zendaya as the actress she wished to portray her in her early years. She grew up in Spanish Harlem and started the girl group The Ronettes with her older sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley. They were signed by famously volatile record producer Phil Spector to his Philles Record label and there they had their breakthrough hit Be My Baby. She married Spector and as she writes in the book, it was clear she had made a big mistake when she woke up one morning to the sound of bars being installed on the windows of their mansion. She smartly fought for the rights to her music in the subsequent divorce, and she was eventually inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and had a second wind when reprised her most famous hit in singing a duet with Eddie Money on Take Me Home Tonight.

Zendaya just became the youngest actress to win Lead Actress in a Drama series for HBO’s Euphoria. At 24, she became the second Black woman to win that category after Viola Davis did it first. Upcoming projects include the Denise Villenueve-directed Dune, and also Malcolm & Marie.