SEAN COMBS TO STAR IN A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Dec 18, 2006 9:30 PM
Production has started in Toronto on a special three-hour television movie adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. Sean Combs, who will reprise the role of Walter Lee Jr., will star along with the cast of the award-winning Broadway revival. The Broadway cast will re-create their roles for the film, including Emmy and Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad, four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, Tony Award nominee Sanaa Lathan and ER star John Stamos. A Raisin in the Sun will air during the 2007 season on ABC.
A Raisin in the Sun, the first play written by an African-American woman to be produced on Broadway, tells the story of a family living and struggling on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s. It premiered in 1959 with a cast that included Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Diana Sands, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett Jr. A Columbia Pictures feature version with the same cast followed in 1961.
Combs appeared opposite Halle Berry in Monster's Ball and made his acting debut in the film Made. Phylicia Rashad won the Best Actress Tony Award for her role in the play, becoming the first African American actress to ever win the Tony in this category. Audra McDonald won the Best Featured Actress Tony Award for her role in the play, and Sanaa Lathan was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress for her performance in A Raisin in the Sun.
The movie will be produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron's Storyline Entertainment, Combs' Bad Boy World Wide Entertainment Group and Sony Pictures Television. The show's Broadway producers—Carl Rumbaugh, Susan Batson and David Binder—will also serve as executive producers. Kenny Leon, who received a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Director for his staging of the play on Broadway, will be making his film debut with this movie, and Paris Qualles, writer of Tuskeegee Airmen and The Rosa Parks Story, will adapt Hansberry's play for the new movie event.
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