Zendaya in to play Ronettes singer Ronnie Spector in biopic from A24

Fresh off of winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her work on Euphoria, Deadline has reported that Zendaya is slated to play singer Ronnie Spector in a film about her life. Coming from A24 and New Regency, the film will be based on "Be My Baby," the book Spector wrote with Vince Waldron.

Ronnie Spector was the lead singer of The Ronettes, one of the most popular groups of the 1960s who were famous for songs such as "Be My Baby", "Baby, I Love You", "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up", "Walking in the Rain", and more. The group was signed by famed American record producer (and later convicted murderer) Phil Spector, and the pair later fell in love and got married, but Ronnie soon realized that she'd made a horrible mistake when she woke up to the sounds of bars being installed on the windows of their mansion. After being subjected to years of psychological torment and threats of murder, not to mention being forbidden to perform, Ronnie escaped one night with the help of her mother and went on to experience a career resurgence and later won a court battle against Phil Spector regarding unpaid royalties for the music of The Ronettes. Deadline states that Ronnie Spector personally signed off on Zendaya playing her in the film and that early conversations are happening with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury to write the script.

Zendaya will next be seen in Denis Villeneuve's upcoming DUNE as Chani, a mysterious young Fremen woman and love interest to Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). Her role in the film is small, but will grow with the second installment, should we be so lucky. DUNE is still slated to hit theaters on December 18, 2020, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets bumped along with everything else.