Oprah To Produce The Color Purple Movie Musical With Steven Spielberg

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for 2016 Essence Festival

Oprah To Produce The Color Purple Movie Musical With Steven Spielberg

It looks like The Color Purple is making it’s return to the big screen, along with some help from all the right people.

According to an exclusive report via Collider, Oprah Winfrey has signed on along with Steven Spielberg to produce a film adaptation of the critically acclaimed Broadway musical. This report comes more than thirty years after the duo originally worked together on The Color Purple film, which was based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

The book told the story of Celie, a black Southern woman who struggles to overcome the pain of extreme poverty and abuse throughout her entire life. Spielberg directed the film, while Oprah portrayed the character of Sofia Johnson, along with some help from Whoopi Goldberg as Celie.

“The Color Purple was a seminal moment in my life. I read the book when it came out,” Oprah told the Collider back in 2014. “I got the book and read it, in one day. And then, I went back, the next day, and bought every copy they had. I would hand the book out to everybody that I knew. I passed it around to everybody in the office. I became obsessed with the book. I moved to Chicago and I would literally walk around with a backpack filled with books because I didn’t have a book club, and I would just start a conversation with people and say, ‘Have you read The Color Purple?’ And if they hadn’t, I’d say, ‘Here, have a copy, right here.’ I was literally obsessed with it.”

Sticking with the project, Oprah would later produce The Color Purple musical, which debuted in 2005 and go on to win multiple Tony Awards.

As for the movie, Quincy Jones and Scott Sanders will produce the upcoming Warner Bros. film alongside Oprah and Spielberg. But a far as talent goes, there are no details about casting, writers, or a director as of now.