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GOAT-ish: Kenya Barris Will Direct, Write Long-Awaited Biopic of Legendary Comic Richard Pryor

If youโ€™ve had enough of Kenya Barris, 2020 is really not your year. Suggested Reading Flint’s Water Crisis Ends With A Major Development Songs by White Artists You Can Add to Your Black Cookout Playlist NBA’s Mike Beasley’s Alleged Gambling Issues Have Him Owing Money to Who?? Video will return here when scrolled back into…

If youโ€™ve had enough of Kenya Barris, 2020 is really not your year.

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Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?

The Black-ish creator is slated to make his directorial debut with a much-anticipated Richard Pryor biopic, which MGM landed in a โ€œheated film rights auction,โ€ writes Deadline.

Barris will write and direct the biopic of the iconic comedian, widely considered to be among Americaโ€™s most influential performers and creative minds.

โ€œThe way Pryor did what he didโ€”with truth and specificity that was somehow self-aware and self-deprecating, and said with an unmatched level of vulnerabilityโ€”that was the power and impact of his work,โ€ said Barris, according to the Hollywood Reporter. โ€œPryor had a voice that was distinctly his and, in many ways, comedy since then has been derivative of what he created. To me, this is a film about that voice, the journey that shaped it, and what it took for it to come to be.โ€

A feature film about the actor and stand-up comic has been a long time coming. As Deadline reports, the Weinstein Company came close to producing a star-studded Pryor film in 2016:

The Weinstein Company and Pryorโ€™s widow Jennifer teamed with director Lee Daniels on a script by Bill Condon and Danny Strong that was going to star Mike Epps as Pryor, with Oprah Winfrey playing Pryorโ€™s grandmother, who ran a brothel and raised the iconic comic there; Eddie Murphy as Pryorโ€™s father, Leroy โ€œBuck Carterโ€ Pryor, and Kate Hudson to play Pryorโ€™s widow, Jennifer. The film never made it to the start line.

Jennifer Lee Pryor will be involved in the MGM film as a producer. She lauded Barrisโ€™ addition to the project, telling THR, โ€œHaving had a front-row seat to much of Richardโ€™s life, I am excited that the mystery of his genius is finally going to be explored and Kenya Barris is the perfect person to do it. Richard and Kenya are creative brothers.โ€

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