Info
Marvin Gaye biopic on the way
Jesse L. Martin, of Rent and Law & Order fame, will play legendary crooner in film focused on the final three years of his life.
The music biopic cash cow is getting another entry, with production set to begin on a documentary of Motown legend Marvin Gaye.
Jesse L. Martin, star of TV's Law & Order and both the theatrical and film version of the musical Rent, will play Gaye in Sexual Healing, the latest attempt to chronicle the singer's life and death.
Sexual Healing will focus on the final three years of Gaye's life, which ended when he was shot and killed by his father in April 1984. Director Lauren Goodman told The Hollywood Reporter that the film was first conceived as a career-spanning project, but rights issues with Gaye's Motown-produced work forced her to rethink the script she'd written and refocus the film on Gaye's final years.
The film will start with Gaye's decision--after years of alleged drug abuse, career setbacks, and tax problems--to move to Europe in 1981. After the success of Midnight Love in 1982, Gaye returned to the US and moved into his parents' home, the site of his murder.
"More than just being the voice of a generation, Marvin Gaye proved to be its very heartbeat," Goodman said. "As a filmmaker, I was drawn to tell the story of a human being who was never fully realized, one with faults and foibles and an uncommon grace expressed every time he picked up the microphone."
Production on the film, which will be shot in Hungary and Germany, is set to begin in three months.
Sexual Healing comes in the wake of the huge success of Ray and Walk the Line, about Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, respectively. A biopic about songstress Nina Simone, starring Mary J. Blige, is also set to begin production later this year.
Just added
