Fantasia's Mahalia Jackson Biopic Headed to Cannes Film Festival

ESSENCE Music Festival headliner Fantasia will get the chance to attend the prestigious Cannes Film Festival next year to premiere a biopic of gospel great Mahalia Jackson. 

Fantasia is slated to play Mahalia in the film, which is based on the book, “Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel.”

“They’ve offered for us to do a screening [at Cannes],” said executive producer Adrian Taylor. “We can either enter it as competition, or we can have it in the non-competition and premiere it.”

The film is scheduled to begin shooting in October 2011 and will be ready for a late 2012 release. This schedule is subject to change since the deadline for Cannes is early April.

If anybody can take us to church like Mahalia, it’s certainly Fantasia.