Hot off her Golden Globe win, Taraji P. Henson has signed on to star in Fox 2000’s Hidden Figures.
Ted Melfi will direct the film about a group of black women who provided NASA with important mathematical data needed to launch the program’s first successful space missions.
Fox is planning to release the film Jan. 13, 2017, to coincide with the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.
Allison Schroeder adapted the screenplay, which is based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same name.
Donna Gigliotti (Silver Linings Playbook) is producing.
Henson recently signed with UTA for representation, and the agency wasted no time in lining up a starring role in a studio film.
It’s a nice case of corporate synergy for the 20th Century Fox given that Henson stars as the sexy, scheming Cookie Lyon on Fox’s mega-hit series Empire, for which she won her Golden Globe earlier this month.
On the film front, Henson’s credits include No Good Deed, opposite Idris Elba. She also co-starred in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which she nabbed a supporting actress Oscar nomination.
She is additionally managed by Vincent Cirrincione Associates.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
