The Color Purple is a powerful story of a Southern Black woman in the early 1900s, originally adapted from Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book for a 1985 movie. That phenomenon garnered 11 Academy Award nominations, featured one of Whoopi Goldberg’s best performances (alongside Oprah Winfrey in a career-defining role, no less), and inspired a stage production that would earn just as many Tony Award nods and one win. So it’s no small feat what Fantasia Barrino and the rest of the cast of the 2023 remake of The Color Purple are doing. The upcoming film from director Blitz Bazawule has screened, and critics are hitting social media with their first reactions.
The phenomenal cast features a number of Broadway veterans, including Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks, who have portrayed Celie and Sofia, respectively, on the stage. There’s no shortage of talent, with The Color Purple also starring Taraji P. Henson, Corey Hawkins from the In the Heights film adaptation and — following her turn as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid — Halle Bailey in another iconic role. Anticipation is high for this movie ahead of its late-year release, and Jazz Tangcay of Variety writes that the actors deliver:
