Casey, you and I can both agree that looks doesn't really matter. Having Prince's long lost twin in this movie won't help it if he can't act. Therefore, I'd have to say that a person with similar knowledge to Casey, who knows more about Prince than Prince does, would do a better job of living Prince - because that's what acting is.
Lets get real though. We all know Casey would be hugely disappointed with this film. Jamie Foxx is talented but he hasn't shown anything Ray-like since his Oscar win and I just can't see him doing well with that Prince aura. To me it's like Chris Tucker playing MJ. It's like nahhhhhhh
Agreed with all of this. I'm not a professional actor - but I'm certain I could do a better job than Foxx. He's just not cut out for the role.
Assuming this is real, the executive decision to cast Foxx probably went like this "He's black. He can sing. He did well in 'Ray' and is known. He won an Oscar".
That was probably it, and those are some seriously shitty reasons to cast him.
That Chris Tucker comparison is spot on. Those motherfuckers probably WOULD cast him as MJ as well, lolz.
It also seems, by these pictures that the movie focuses on Prince's commercial peak with "Purple Rain". That's the "Purple Rain" font used on the title poster, that font was never used on any other Prince album, the tag line is "Let's Go Crazy", which of course is the opening song to the album and movie, and the outfit depicted in that second picture is an outfit worn on the Purple Rain tour.
But the whole "Purple Rain" era lasted just over a year, from late 1983 to early 1985. Aside from the album and movie themselves, the music videos contained imagery and clips from both the movie and the tour, and there was a live concert officially released on VHS from this tour. It's the most overexposed part of Prince's entire 30 year career, naturally due to it being such a commercially successful behemoth.
But it's not the most interesting part of Prince's career. It's not the most creative part of Prince's career. It's not the musical or visual peak of his career in artistic terms. Hell, the movie "Purple Rain" itself is already a fictionalized version of certain parts of Prince's lifestory up to that point. So focusing on that era is just unnecessary. It doesn't need to be done.
This whole thing just screams of business and money, not art, and not truth. I guess time will tell but clearly this is going to be nothing special. Most biopics aren't and I enjoy the genre overall. Walk The Line was great at telling the Johnny Cash story. What's Love Got To Do With It was great at telling Tina Turner's story. Heck, even the TV series "The Jacksons: An American Dream" did a decent job at covering the story of the Jackson Five and Jacksons story. Selena was an incredible movie too.
Then on the other hand you have piece of shit garbage ass movies like NOTORIOUS.
Sure it's premature to make any sort of judgement right now, especially considering there's still a possibility that this could all be a big hoax (although something tells me it isnt considering that TMZ and prince.org were both made to take down the pictures....don't know who gave that order).....but this shit is off to a bad start, and if they fuck this up, they're doing an injustice to one of the greatest musical icons of all time.
And why are they doing this now? He's not old, or dying, or sick. He still releases great albums that sell a ton on pretty much a yearly basis. He's still quite publically visible with huge regular tours and TV appearances.
And yet it's been 3 years since James Brown died......where's the JB biopic? Where's the Marvin Gaye biopic? Stevie and Prince are on a pretty much equal level as far as success and impact on music, but Stevie is from the older generation to Prince and had his biggest successes in the decade prior to Prince's.....where the fuck is the Stevie Wonder movie?
It just doesn't make sense.