ET details everything to know about the untitled musical project starring Halle Bailey, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Da'Vine Joy Randolph.
Halle Bailey is jumping into a new role after welcoming her son, Halo, at the end of last year. The Little Mermaid star, 24, is set to star opposite Kelvin Harrison Jr. in Universal Pictures' untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry project, ET can confirm.
Bailey and Harrison, 29, will join Da'Vine Joy Randolph in the coming-of-age musical set in the summer of 1977. The film will take place in Virginia Beach and is inspired by Williams' childhood neighborhood of Atlantis Apartments.
The upcoming film is Randolph's, 37, first announced project after she nabbed her first Academy Award (and the first accolade of the evening) for her critically acclaimed performance as Mary Lamb in The Holdovers.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Gondry will helm the project with a script written by Martin Hynes (Toy Story 4 and The Magician's Elephant) and Steven Levenson (Tick, Tick...Boom!, FOSSE/VERDON).
Williams will produce with Mimi Valdés through i am OTHER -- Williams' multimedia creative collective and record label that serves as an umbrella for all of his endeavors -- alongside Gil Netter, who will produce through Gil Netter Productions.
Universal's Senior Vice President of Production Development, Ryan Jones, and Director of Production Development, Christine Sun, will oversee the project for the Studio.
Variety first broke the casting news.
Bailey has been working nonstop since making her theatrical debut in last year's live-action reimagining of the 1989 Disney classic. She starred in the holiday hit The Color Purple and released her debut single, "Angel," which marked her first non-theatrical release without her sister, Chloë Bailey, and is her first release since the Chloë x Halle duo's critically acclaimed album, Ungodly Hour, in 2020.
Her historic casting as Princess Ariel made waves with viewers and famous faces alike. In May 2023, when speaking with ET about her groundbreaking role, the singer said that while it "feels absolutely amazing" to join the iconic ranks of the Disney Princesses, being one of the few Black Princesses is on a whole new level.
"I just am really grateful to be in this position," Bailey said, citing Brandy Norwood's Cinderella and Anika Noni Rose's Princess Tiana as her inspirations.
"I loved Brandy as Cinderella; she was so amazing, such a role model and inspiration and a really big kind of studying point for me as I was taking on Ariel," Bailey shared. "I just watched how amazing she was in that role and how comfortable she was in her skin and how impactful to audiences and little girls like me who watched it. And Anika Noni Rose, who's just outstanding. I've had the chance to meet her and we got to sing [The Princess and the Frog's] song together, 'Almost There' for [2022's Disney Family Singalong] with my sister. She was always so kind! But there are these beautiful Black women pioneers who've done this before and been there for me to be able to say, 'OK, I can do this.'"
Since then, Bailey has released her second single, a powerful love ballad titled "In Your Hands." In it, she sings about the battle for a once-in-a-lifetime love.
The single's music video solely features Bailey. It alternates scenes of her along the rocky oceanside at night and in the daytime as she belts out the song's lyrics and pulls off a spectacular guitar riff.
At the end of the music video, the singer is joined by a special guest -- a baby that fans have deduced is her son, Halo! It would make sense that Halo would appear in the video because, as Bailey explained in an Instagram Live chat with her fans ahead of the video's release, the love song doubles as an ode to her baby boy.
"The beautiful thing about the song as well is that, the verses that I wrote, I wrote when I was pregnant," she explained in a clip of the Instagram Live shared to X (formerly Twitter). "In a way it has a double meaning, the verses are almost to Halo because I felt like I was singing to him. Just about how I'm always going to be there for him and my journey as his mother and all these things. And it made me really happy."
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