Yahoo Movies Peaky Blinders star to play Bob Marley in new movie
Kingsley Ben-Adir has been tapped to play Bob Marley in a biopic about the reggae musician in a movie for Paramount Pictures, Deadline has reported.
The Peaky Blinders star will play the legend, who died at the age of 36 after releasing songs such as 'Get Up, Stand Up', 'One Love', 'No Woman, No Cry', 'Could You Be Loved', 'Buffalo Solider', 'Jammin' and 'Redemption Song'.
It's taken Paramount nearly a year to find the right actor to play Marley in the biopic, taking a page out of the book of films about other icons like Elton John, Freddy Mercury, and more.
Related: Marvel's Secret Invasion casts Peaky Blinders star Kingsley Ben-Adir in lead role
Deadline's sources says that executives at the company saw endless auditions and met with dozens of actors for the role before Ben-Adir became the frontrunner.
Bob Marley's wife Rita Marley and children Ziggy and Cedella Marley will be producing alongside Paramount, and Robert Teitel.
King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green will also be directing the as-yet-unnamed biopic.
Ben-Adir found success playing pathologist Marcus Summer in ITV's Vera and private detective Karim Washington in Netflix's The OA.
Related: Why Peaky Blinders series 7 was cancelled, and what's next
He later moved on to BBC show Peaky Blinders, playing Colonel Ben Younger in season four and five of the show, and has had a number of theatre roles too.
This is not the first time Ben-Adir has portrayed a legend onscreen, having played activist Malcolm X in the Regina King-helmed movie One Night in Miami and Barack Obama in Showtime's The Comey Rule.
He has also appeared in High Fidelity alongside Zoë Kravitz as Russell McCormack, and more recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Ben-Adir will be playing the unnamed villain in Marvel's Secret Invasion, an upcoming miniseries set to air on Disney+, which also stars Samuel L. Jackson.
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