Barry Jenkins has come on board to direct Zendaya in A24’s Be My Baby, the long-gestating Ronnie Spector biopic.

Deadline exclusively broke the news Wednesday morning that Jenkins had joined Zendaya’s project and Dave Kajganich would now be writing the screenplay, which initially had Jackie Sibblies Drury attached to pen.

As Deadline reported, “the star and Jenkins, who’d been looking to work together for some time, agreed on a version of Spector’s story that could immerse audiences in what the singer’s life with the troubled producer Phil Spector felt like rather than a traditional cradle to the grave biopic.”

The project was first announced several years ago

A24 first set the project back in 2020 with producers Zendaya, Adam Siegel, Mark Itkin and Tom Shelly. Deadline states that the life rights for Spector and her memoir, Be My Baby, are still intact, with Kajganich “hard at work on a expressive interpretation of Spector’s life Zendaya. and Jenkins are after.” Prior to her death, Spector was executive producing the project and picked Zendaya to play her, similarly to how Aretha Franklin picked Jennifer Hudson.

Jenkins’ producing partners Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak have now joined the project to produce under their Pastel banner.

Here’s more on Spector’s story, per the 2020 report:

She grew up in Spanish Harlem and started the girl group The Ronettes with her older sister Estelle Bennett and their cousin Nedra Talley. They were signed by famously volatile record producer Phil Spector to his Philles Record label and there they had their breakthrough hit Be My Baby. She married Spector and as she writes in the book, it was clear she had made a big mistake when she woke up one morning to the sound of bars being installed on the windows of their mansion. She smartly fought for the rights to her music in the subsequent divorce, and she was eventually inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and had a second wind when reprised her most famous hit in singing a duet with Eddie Money on Take Me Home Tonight.

The latest A24 collaboration for both Jenkins and Zendaya

This is yet another A24-Barry Jenkins collaboration, as Moonlight was from the studio and Jenkins produces Sorry, Baby, which bowed at Sundance earlier this year. This is Zendaya’s third A24 project, after her HBO series Euphoria and the upcoming film The Drama, which she will star in with Robert Pattinson.

Jenkins also recently boarded The Natural Order at Universal, and is set to direct Glen Powell in that film.

Be My Baby

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