While pop icon Madonna has always had an embittered relationship with movies, with criticism extending from her acting ability to her choices in projects (she did however, famously, win a Golden Globe Award for her performance in 1996 musical Evita), it doesn’t seem to have dissuaded the former Material Girl from another turn in the director’s chair. She appears to signing up for her third feature as helmer, a romance called Adé for Academy Award winning producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty). Madonna made her directorial debut with the little seen 2008 music comedy Filth and Wisdom and followed it up with the critically reviled 2011 period romance W.E., which despite terrible reviews earned an Oscar nomination for its Costume Design and a Golden Globe nomination for it’s song “Masterpierce,” which Madonna co-wrote.
Adé is based on the novel Adé: A Love Story by Catherine Walker (daughter of The Color Purple novelist Alice Walker) tells the story of a bi-racial college student and Adé, a Swahili man, who fall in love off the coast of Kenya. They plan to marry and dream of a ideal and simple life, but their story gets caught in the nation’s civil war and malaria outbreak. While set in different circumstances, the film on concept may share the romantic abandon sensibility Madonna showcased in W.E., which centered on the scandalous love affair of the divorced Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII (background intrigue, if you’ll remember, in The King’s Speech that led to Colin Firth’s King George ascending to the throne). Hopefully this time out Madonna will have learned from past mistakes.
This project appears along way off from a starting date as no screenwriter has been announced yet. The book, supposedly based on the author’s real-life experiences, was released last October.
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