As reported this past week, Selena Gomez is looking for her big Oscar role, and it might come in the form of playing ‘70s music icon Linda Ronstadt. This is a dream role for Gomez, and absolute perfect casting as she looks exactly like Ronstadt did in her 30s.
Needless to say, you need a director to pull this movie off, and a good one. How about David O. Russell? That’s what Roger Friedman is now reporting. Russell has hopped onboard the project, which is being written by James Keach, who produced the award winning Ronstadt documentary, “The Sound of My Voice.”
It turns out that the award winning director of “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle” is a huge Ronstadt fan, and this is something he’s wanted to do for a long time. Here’s an interesting detail from Friedman’s piece:
It’s likely that the vocals in the film will be mostly from Ronstadt’s recordings, although Gomez has a great voice and could certainly contribute to the soundtrack.
It is indeed very hard to duplicate Ronstadt’s voice — one of the greatest vocalists of her time. Even if Gomez is a singer in her own right, it’d be a terrible idea for the actress to do her own singing in this film.
Ronstadt, known for “You’re No Good” and “Blue Bayou,” has been battling Parkinson’s for a few years now — this film could be a wonderful tribute to her legendary career.
As for Russell, his last film, 2022’s critically panned “Amsterdam,” lost Searchlight over $100 million. It wasn’t as bad as critics claimed it to be, but it also wasn’t as good as it should have been. A comeback is more than welcome.
There is still some prestige left in Russell’s brand of filmmaking as he’s constantly delivered critically-acclaimed films over the course of his 30-year career, such as “Silver Linings Playbook”, “The Fighter”, “Three Kings”, “Flirting With Disaster” and “American Hustle”.
We’re not entirely sure if the Ronstadt biopic will be his next film, maybe it is, but he has two other projects currently in active development: the John Madden biopic with Will Ferrell and the Sacha Baron Cohen led “Super Toys.”
Cory Finley, a talented filmmaker, has directed three films so far: "Thoroughbreds" (2017), "Bad Education” (2020), and "Landscape with Invisible Hand.”