Steven Spielberg & Oprah Winfrey Bringing ‘Color Purple’ Musical To Big Screen

The Color Purple is returning back to the big screen. After first being a hit book, it was followed by a movie, and then a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Now, Warner Bros. is developing a movie adaptation of its musical.

Steven Spielberg, who directed and produced the 1985 movie, will work as a producer on the movie musical version. His first crack at the story garnered 11 Academy Award nominations but was shut out from winning a single Oscar.

Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, and Scott Sanders, who produced the Broadway version, will produce the newest adaption as well.

Both the movie and stage productions have adapted the 1982 Alice Walker novel. The story focuses on Celie, a black woman who grows up in intense poverty in the Jim Crow era South, receiving abuse from her father and husband. Whoopi Goldberg stared as Celie and received an Oscar nomination as did Winfrey, in what was her feature acting debut. The movie was not only a critical success but a box office success too, earning $140 million worldwide on a $15 million budget.

Walker would become the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

The musical opened on Broadway in 2005 and earned 11 Tony nominations. A 2016 revival won two Tonys including best musical revival. Sanders produced the revival.

“We’re really excited to create a film that translates the heart and emotion we found in telling this generational story on stage,” Sanders said. “This is an incredibly powerful drama that needs to be shared.”

The project is still in the early stages of development. The next step for it is to choose a writer. No casting decisions have been made.