David O. Russell to Direct Selena Gomez in Linda Ronstadt Biopic

The upcoming Linda Ronstadt biopic has found its director.

Filmmaker David O. Russell has been tapped to direct the upcoming film, which will star Selena Gomez as Ronstadt, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The “Single Soon” singer recently teased the role on social media. On Tuesday (Jan. 9), Gomez shared a photo of Ronstadt’s 2013 memoir, Simple Dreams, in her Instagram Stories.

The upcoming film will be produced by James Keach (who also produced the Oscar-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and the Grammy-winning Ronstadt documentary The Sound of My Voice) along with Boylan, according to the website of Great Eastern Music, a music publisher founded by John Boylan, the “Blue Bayou” singer’s manager. A title for the biopic has not revealed.

It’s not hard to see why Gomez would be a good fit for the role. According to the Only Murders in the Building star herself, she bears a resemblance to the 11-time Grammy winner. “I always used to get told that I look like her,” Gomez previously shared during a 2015 appearance on On Air With Ryan Seacrest. “And I started listening to her music because of that.”

Russell is a five-time Academy Awards nominee for such films as Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and The Fighter. His latest movie in the theaters was 2022’s Amsterdam, which featured an all-star cast of Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington.

Ronstadt, meanwhile, announced her retirement in 2011, citing her Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, but later sharing that she actually has a brain disorder called progressive supranuclear palsy, which resembles Parkinson’s. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 and received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2016. During her decades-long career, she earned 10 top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits, with “You’re No Good” reaching the summit in February 1975.

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