We’re not entirely sure how you turn a music TV show like Soul Train into a film, but that’s not stopping Warner Bros. having a go. Although the show featured performances by the likes of Ike and Tina Turner, Gladys Knight And The Pips and all sorts of other classic African American artists (as well as a lot of people dancing in front of the camera), it is the equivalent of trying to turn Top Of The Pops into a film.
However they’re planning to do it, Warner has hired Malcolm Spellman (Dead Presidents) to write the script for the film. Apparently the movie will be set in the 1980s (although as the series started in 1971 and helped bring black artists to the masses on TV, you’d think that would be a good hook for a film, but apparently not), with Spellman talking about how, “All of the hip-hop street dances you see today were born during that time period and were first seen on that show, and I remember doing all of them when I was a kid.”
Presumably the film will therefore be about the birth of hip-hop, with the producers (who also produce Soul Train) wanting the movie to feature a fictional Soul Train tour featuring bands and dancers, with the action centred around an act desperate to get on that tour.
So is The Old Grey Whistle Test: The Movie up next?