UPDATE: Deadline has a quote from a studio insider saying the film “could push” as a result of Beyonce’s pregnancy, but beyond that doesn’t offer any major new updates.
No, this doesn’t mark the start of me delving into gossip coverage, but when MTV tweeted from the red carpet at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards saying, “OMG Beyonce just made a huge announcement on the VMA carpet! baby!” the first thing that came to mind was what does this mean for Clint Eastwood‘s A Star is Born, a remake of the classic story in which a starry-eyed girl dreaming of being a star, has to scrape out a living as a waitress until she finds a helping hand from a alcoholic movie idol. Beyonce Knowles was set to star in the lead role, following in the footsteps of Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand. However, with a baby on the way will she need to be replaced? Will they move the schedule around to accommodate?
Plans when the project was first mentioned back in January was to start shooting this Fall as Eastwood puts the final touches on J. Edgar, which is due to hit theaters in November starring Leonardo DiCaprio. There was even talk recently that Christian Bale was among the names under consideration for the lead male role along with previously mentioned names including DiCaprio, Will Smith, P Diddy, Eddie Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Hamm. The thing is, if they do decide to replace Beyonce, who do they replace her with?
If they stick to the plan of having a black actress in the lead role my mind immediately turns to Beyonce’s Dreamgirls co-stars, Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose, the latter of which continued to show off her singing chops in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, while Hudson hasn’t done a ton of work, but does have the title role in Darrell Roodt‘s upcoming Toronto Film Festival late addition, Winnie.
A lot, though, depends on the script by Remember Me scribe Will Fetters. I have actually never seen any of the previous three incarnations of the story and don’t know exactly how the musical numbers play out. In Dreamgirls many of them were studio-set performances with only a few that were actually melded into the story unlike my more favorite musicals, which actually use the musical numbers to tell the story completely. In my opinion your options change depending on the material where a more seasoned actress may be necessary if you are doing more than just shooting music videos in-between each scene.
It will be interesting to see how this story affects the feature. As for Beyonce, congratulations are in order as this will be her first child with rapper Jay-Z.
