Lionel Richie and Walt Disney Studios have teamed up to develop a movie based on the songs from the music legend, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
With a working title of All Night Long, after his 1983 No. 1 hit, the project sees Richie producing with his manager Bruce Eskowitz as well as Dana Brunetti (Fifty Shades of Grey, Captain Phillips) and Matt Del Piano who will produce through their banner, Cavalry Media.
Pete Chiarelli, who worked on Crazy Rich Asians and Now You See Me 2, is writing the original script. Disney picked up the project as a pitch earlier this year.
Disney envisions the project as a theatrical release, hoping to capitalize on the trend of audiences embracing musicals at the box office. In recent years biopics Rocketman and Bohemian Rhapsody generated big returns and even Oscars; Rhapsody sung its way to $903 million worldwide and made Rami Malek an Academy Award-winning champion. The Greatest Showman, released in 2017 by Fox, was also a surprise success.
This project is being developed not as a biopic but more akin to a something such as Mamma Mia!, which took the songs of pop band Abba and built a story around it. Mia! was a West End and Broadway musical before being adapted into a movie in 2008 starring Meryl Streep, Colin Firth and Pierce Brosnan.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter