Earlier this week, A24 announced that the highly-anticipated Ronnie Spector biopic, starring Zendaya, will be directed by Barry Jenkins. The film, titled Be My Baby (of course), is based on Spector’s 1990 memoir Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette. The girl-group legend personally chose Zendaya to play her shortly before her death in 2022. “Thank you for sharing your life with me, I could listen to your stories for hours and hours,” Zendaya wrote in a tribute back then. “I hope I make you proud.”
Be My Baby is just one of the several highly buzzy biopics of female musicians that are currently in the works. There’s also the long-promised Janis Joplin film starring Shailene Woodley, as well as a Linda Ronstadt movie where the powerhouse vocalist will be played by Selena Gomez. These movies all follow a slew of successful male biopics — most obviously last year’s Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown, which garnered Oscar nominations for star Timothée Chalamet and others, but also the Queen movie, which Rami Malek actually won an Oscar for, and don’t forget the recent films that dramatized the life stories of Elvis, Elton John, Bob Marley, Mötley Crüe, and Robbie Williams as a chimp for some reason. It will be refreshing to see female musicians get the same Hollywood treatment.
and Robbie Williams as a chimp for some reason
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