The Sam Cooke Biopic is Moving Forward – Screenplay Complete
Start singing “Ain’t That Good News”: A Sam Cooke biopic has taken a significant step toward becoming a reality.
Start
singing “Ain’t That Good News”: A Sam Cooke biopic has taken a
significant step toward becoming a reality. The screenwriters behind the
all-Beatles musical “Across the Universe” have finished their
adaptation of Peter Guralnick’s definitive biography of Sam Cooke for
ABKCO, which owns Cooke’s publishing and the bulk of his master
recordings. ABKCO CEO Jody Klein is now looking for a director.
Clement and Ian La Frenais recently completed their adaptation of
“Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke,” which Klein optioned in the
fall of 2009. The book was published in 2005, two years after Guralnick
had written the script for “Sam Cooke: Legend,” the only authorized
documentary on Cooke. It won a Grammy for longform video.
“We
had been looking for a long time for a writer to develop Peter’s book,”
Klein told Billboard, “and it clicked when we met them. They understood
the artist, they understood the times. It’s one of those things, like
when you meet the love of your life and you know you have met your
(future) wife. They have written a fantastic script.”
the script covers Cooke’s entire life — 1931 to 1964 — from childhood
through his years as a gospel singer, a pop star, civil rights activist
and eventually a label owner and music publisher. His music ushered the
transition of R&B into soul music.
Cooke
is widely regarded as the first significant R&B performer to appeal
to black and white audiences as well as multiple generations through
songs such as “You Send Me,” “Twistin’ the Night Away” and “Only
Sixteen.” Shortly before he was murdered in 1964, Cooke penned and
recorded “A Change Is Gonna Come,” a song often listed as the most
significant musical piece to emerge from the civil rights struggle of
the 1950s and ’60s.
Gabriel among the “great artists who can spot talent” and run a
business, noting “Sam was the first one to possess it all.”
Screenwriters
Clement and La Frenais have worked together since the late 1960s when
they collaborated on numerous British television shows. Their first
major music film project was 1991’s “The Commitments”; their most
recent film is the U2-rooted “Killing Bono,” which opens April 1 in the
U.K. but does not yet have a U.S. distributor.
of the elements have aligned themselves,” Klein says, noting the usual
roadblocks in biopics — music and life rights — are already in hand .
“We have secured rights from the Cooke family. One of the benefits of
being a private company is that it enables us the appropriate amount of
time to develop the script and make this happen. It will not get lost.”