Barry Jenkins will direct a film based on the life of choreographer Alvin Ailey.
A spokesperson for Fox Searchlight on Monday confirmed that the studio is developing the project, with the ‘Moonlight’ filmmaker directing. Jenkins last helmed the Oscar-nominated James Baldwin adaptation ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’.
Raised in segregated rural Texas, Ailey became a pioneering choreographer, dancer and director who helped popularise modern dance. He died in 1989 at the age of 58 from Aids-related complications. In 2014, President Barack Obama awarded him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The film will be partly based on Jennifer Dunning’s biography ‘Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance’. Searchlight last year began developing the film after securing the rights to Ailey’s choreography from the Ailey Organization.