Adaptation of Broadway Musical begins casting.
Samuel L. Jackson (‘Django Unchained’) and Angela Bassett (‘Olympus Has Fallen’) are reportedly in negotiations a big screen adaptation of Langston Hughes’ gospel musical ‘Black Nativity.’ The adaptation, which is being developed by writer/director Kasi Lemmons, also has Jennifer Hudson (‘Dreamgirls’) in talks for a role.
First performed on Broadway in 1961, ‘Black Nativity’ follows “a young black teen from Baltimore who is sent by his single mother to Harlem to spend Christmas with the grandparents he’s never met. Through his grandfather’s Christmas Eve sermon and a stylized, dream-sequence retelling of the classic Nativity story, he learns about the importance of faith and family.”
Jackson and Bassett, who recently worked together on the Broadway production ‘The Mountaintop,’ would be playing the boy’s grandparents, while Hudson would take the role of the mother. Variety has word that Jackson would likely be playing multiple characters during the Nativity sequence. The young lead has yet to be cast.