Zendaya is set to play ’60s music icon Ronnie Spector, the original “bad girl of rock & roll,” in Be My Baby, directed by Academy Award winner Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, Mufasa: The Lion King) for A24.
Based on Spector’s 1990 memoir, Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, Or, My Life as a Fabulous Ronette, the upcoming biopic will focus on the singer’s estranged marriage with music producer Phil Spector, which she described as an “unending nightmare.” Rather than being a straightforward biopic, it will “immerse audiences in what the singer’s life with the troubled producer Phil Spector felt like.”
Before she died in 2022, Spector was an executive producer on the project and personally handpicked Zendaya to play her. Zendaya wrote on Instagram a heartfelt tribute, saying, “Thank you for your unmeasured talent, your unwavering love for performing, your strength, resilience and your grace. Rest in great power, Ronnie. I hope to make you proud.”
The film’s screenplay will be written by David Kajganich, who previously wrote the screenplays of A Bigger Splash, Suspiria, and Bones and All, from acclaimed director Luca Guadagnino.
Zendaya, who has been attached to the project since 2020, reunites with A24 following the Emmy-winning teen drama series, Euphoria. She will also star in the studio’s romantic-comedy film The Drama, also starring Robert Pattinson.
The biopic also marks another collaboration for A24 and Jenkins, following 2016’s Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Sorry, Baby, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was produced by Jenkins.
