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,...
