THE COLOR PURPLE’ opens with $18.1M on Christmas Day.
Second highest domestic opening day for a Christmas Day release ever.
However it was hip-hop, specifically Public Enemy’s 1988 album It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, that had the biggest impact on Bazawule.
“I had never heard young black people express themselves in that way before,” Bazawule said on the website of his now defunct artist development company, Embassy MVMT.
Inspired by Public Enemy, Bazawule released several mixtapes after he left Accra to study at Kent State University in the US.
After graduation he moved to New York – the birthplace of hip-hop – to pursue a music career.
In his 41 years, the Ghanaian has also co-directed a Beyoncé film, published a novel, performed his music across the world and set a Netflix record.
His latest challenge – a musical of the potent, Pulitzer Prize-winning book about a troubled, young, black woman fighting racism and the patriarchy in America – is released in the US on Christmas Day.
Bazawule’s Color Purple follows a 1985 film adaptation that won actress Whoopi Goldberg a Golden Globe, and a Broadway musical that opened in 2005.
The film stars Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, H.E.R., Halle Bailey, Louis Gossett Jr., Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, Ciara, Jon Batiste, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and Fantasia Barrino in her film debut as Celie. Brooks and the latter reprise their roles from the productions of the stage musical. It tells the story of Celie, an African American woman living in the American South during the early 1900s.
The movie which clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes is on general worldwide release with no streaming dates as yet confirmed.
