More On Charley Pride Biopic

Charley Pride photo courtesy of charleypride.com

October 9, 2006--Allaboutcountry.com reports that Hustle & Flow actor Terrence Howard will star in an upcoming Charley Pride biopic. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Memphis director Craig Brewer will reunite with his "Hustle & Flow" star, who will portray Charley under a deal expected to be signed with Paramount Pictures.

"One of the reasons I went after this project is because I knew I could shoot a majority of it in Memphis," Brewer told the newspaper. Born to poor sharecroppers, one of eleven children in Sledge, Mississippi, Charley is a timeless everyman, revered by his musical peers and adored by countless millions of fans around the globe.

Charley unofficially started his music career in the late 1950s as a ballplayer with the Negro American League’s Memphis Red Sox, singing and playing guitar on the team bus between ballparks. Self-taught on a guitar bought at the age 14 from Sears Roebuck, Charley would join various bands onstage as he and the team roved the country. Seeking to leap to the major leagues, Charley even tried out for the infamously bad 1962 New York Mets, where he met Brewer's grandfather, "Marvelous" Marv Throneberry, Brewer said. Charley also cut a few songs at Sun Studios in Memphis before finding his way to Nashville, where he recorded 36 No. 1 hits.

Brewer said that it was Howard who came to him with the idea for the biopic. The actor and director's previous collaboration earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Howard, a guitar player who said even during the shooting of the rap story "Hustle & Flow" that he preferred country to rap.

"Everybody's been speculating as to what my and Terrence's next project would be, and I'm ecstatic that this came out of Terrence's passion," Brewer said. "Charley Pride is a character, man." Assuming a script is accepted, the movie still likely wouldn't be ready to go before the cameras until 2008.

"I think the thing that's very interesting about Charley Pride is when he ascended to country fame, it was a time of civil rights, of activism, and I imagine he felt rather alone to some extent and had to internalize a lot of feelings," Brewer said. "He had to shake a lot of hands, the hands of people who adored him and also the hands of fans who were true racists."