Filed under: Drama, Music & Musicals, Casting, Celebrities and Controversy
VH1 is claiming Elijah Kelley will play Sammy Davis Jr. in an upcoming biopic, although they might be jumping the gun. Last month, he let it slip that he was in talks to play the iconic Rat Packer, but now he's allowed to get at least a little chatty. Kelley told VH1: "It's going pretty well... Something is definitely in the works to be done on that project, and that's a dream project for me. I feel like that would open so many avenues and so many doors." If he can pull off this performance, he's probably right, but those are some big shoes to fill. Kelley went on to say: "I want to capture what actually made him what he was. He got really commercialized as he got older, [but] I just want to show everybody, along with the producers, how he came to be the way he was." That being said, there will be some cameos by Sammy's rat-pack cohorts later in the film.Dealing with the performer's youth should help the project stand up against its competitors, also fighting for the Davis Jr. spotlight -- Denzel Washington and Brian Grazer are producing Black and White, and there's another one out there, Sammy and Kim, that details his relationship with actress Kim Novak. While there is bound to be overlap -- Washington's project seems to be the all-encompassing feature to the specific bits of time for the other two -- it'll be nice to get detailed pieces of his life, rather than dueling biopics that cover the same material, like the recent Capote features. Kelley says of the competition: "I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and keeping my prayers up. You know what? It's like this: I just want to make the project a quality project. Regardless of whether there's 25 of them out, [I want to make] the one that's supposed to be seen, and supposed to be heard, and supposed to be felt." Now we've just got to wait for the project to gear up and see what they make of it.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
