- Chadwick Boseman, Get On Up, 2013. Some talk of Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixoteobsession as being history’s most cursed film. Others – like Spike Lee and producer Brian Glazer, Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment partner – vote for the biopic of The Godfather of Soul …James Brown! Glazer kicked off the project in the 1990s. (Quixotedated back to 1988). And went through four Mister Dynamites – Chris Brown, Usher and Spike’s choices Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes – plus numerous musical rights hassles, before Mick Jagger joined the ten producers and Spike was succeeded by Tate Taylor and most of his cast from The Helpcast. Plus his42star, Boseman, who spent two months honing singing and dancing like The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz.Spike was going to use Brown’s voice, but this is no longer the warts-and-all script James Brown had worked on with Glaze, Lee & Co. But, like Boseman, it is outstanding. Murphy was Brownesque in Dreamgirls, 2006, but had always voted Snipes (abent in jail for tax evasion). “He turned into the action dude, but Wesley has all the talent… James Brown isn’t just singing and splits, you gotta be able to act, you gotta get chased in a car in a crack haze and shot at. Wesley could pull that off, you need to be an actor.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Usher Raymond IVUsual occupation: SingerCasting Calls: 1