The power of Shakespeare is that Hollywood always finds new ways to bring back the playwright’s famed characters back into its creative space. Lady Macbeth is undoubtedly one of his most fierce inventions, and she has her own musical currently under development at Amazon Studios. Channing Tatum and music producer Scooter Braun are officially producing the untitled movie together with the Anna and the Apocalypse director on board.
The Lady Macbeth-centric musical is reportedly being approached from a YA angle in Amazon Studios' attempt to capture the audience Netflix is finding major success with. Just look at this weekend’s top ten for the streaming service featuring The Kissing Booth 2 and Cursed. The project is about “a teenage girl who grapples with her own morality as she contends with the dreadful consequences of her ambition,” per The Hollywood Reporter.
It will be penned by indie YA script writer S.J. Inwards and helmed by John McPhail who made a splash in 2017 with his comedic Christmas-set zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse, which scored a number of nominations on the festival circuit. Channing Tatum’s production company, Free Association, is behind the project, which previously made the Magic Mike films, 22 Jump Street and Logan Lucky. Whether Tatum will be in the movie itself has not been announced.
Scooter Braun’s SB Projects were behind the FX comedy Dave, CBS’ Scorpion and the Justin Bieber music documentary Never Say Never. Braun is well known for becoming the manager to Bieber when he was just 12 years old after discovering him on YouTube and for being embroiled in a legal conflict with Taylor Swift over the rights to her music.
In the Shakespeare play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the wife to the Scottish general Macbeth, who is influential in her turn to murder and war. She is a manipulative wife and is characterized as a masculine soul in a female body by her husband. The character was previously portrayed by Marion Cotillard against Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth in a 2015 iteration of the drama. Midsommar actress Florence Pugh also played the character in a 2016 movie about the lady.
Aside from this YA project, Amazon Studios has the romance based on a novel by Krystal Sutherland called Chemical Hearts, dropping on the platform later this month. The film about a transfer student finding her passion at a student newspaper stars Riverdale star Lili Reinhart and Paper Towns actor Austin Abrams.
Channing Tatum is also set to star in an R-rated musical with Joseph Gordon-Levitt called Wingmen, and he is co-directing and starring in a comedy called Dog, about an army ranger who goes on a road trip down the PCH freeway with his pup on his way to a funeral. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more movie news.
