Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg to reunite for musical adaptation of Alice Walker's Pulitzer-winning The Color Purple

Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg will be collaborating for a musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s 1982 epistolary novel, The Color Purple. Apart from the two, Quincy Jones and Scott Sanders will also be producing the film musical with Warner Bros, informed  The Hollywood Reporter.

The novel has been earlier adapted into a film by Spielberg himself in 1985, starring Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg in their debut performances. Despite 11 Academy Award nominations, the film failed to bag an Oscar. It had also been adapted for the Broadway stage, which went onto win 11 Tony Award nominations in 2006.

Situated almost entirely in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the plight of African-American women in the Southern United States during the 1930s, through the lens of Celie (played by Goldberg), whose entire life is chronicled by a series of letters that she addresses to God. She writes about how she was physically and sexually abused by both her father and her husband and her her journey through her oppressive surroundings. The film was a commercial and a critical success, raising $142 million from a budget of $15 million.

The forthcoming film based on the novel is currently in early development. Neither the cast nor the directors and writers have been zeroed for the project.