Forest Whitaker Spills More Details On His Louis Armstrong Biopic 'Satchmo', Calls The Weinsteins Treatment Of 'Hurricane Season' A Travesty

Way back in 2008, both Forest Whitaker and the team of Charles S. Dutton and John Sayles announced Louis Armstrong biopics in the works. Dutton and Sayles were developing a potential 6-hour mini-series for HBO which, given that we’ve heard nothing since, we’re guessing is dead in the water. But we’re glad to report that in a recent interview Blackfilm.com, Whitaker revealed that he’s still in the director’s chair for the big screen and Armstrong estate approved biopic “Satchmo” (formerly titled “What A Wonderful World”) and that he’s aiming to shoot in April 2011.

As Dutton noted back then, Amstrong’s life was epic and it would be one hard to condense into a traditional biopic format, which is why he approached it as a mini series: “…Louis’ life is just so huge you just can’t, you know because the problem was well, what do we leave out, what do we keep in, and we could never really grasp the story on a 2 hour movie. So, you know it took us 15 years later to decide to do it as a big mini series.”

While Whitaker is still sticking with making a feature film that will track the life of the legendary jazz musician from when he was born, the actor has wisely decided not try and act the whole thing himself. “I am going to play the character. I won’t play the whole of it, it starts when he’s born. But a couple of people will be performing the character,” he says. We’re guessing Whitaker will play Armstrong in his later years, while younger actors will be cast for sequences involving his early life.

With the film over a year away from getting in front of cameras, casting and financing is still far from being in place. “I haven’t cast the movie. I probably shouldn’t be talking about it because I’m still in the budgeting stages. I have ideas for casting, but I feel that as of now, every person I’ve approached to be on the crew who has read the script has attached themselves to it. I feel as though the same will occur with the actors because the roles are pretty amazing, really great characters. We’ll see.”

There’s no word yet on a distributor either, but you can bet the Weinsteins won’t be first on his list. The financially troubled studio quietly dumped the Whitaker starring, inspirational sports drama “Hurricane Season” on DVD earlier this year. Whitaker is peeved that the Weinsteins went back on their word to give the film a theatrical release (and it did have release dates penciled in at one time), “Yeah, I think that was a travesty. I think the Weinsteins should…it’s not just about me, the fact that they didn’t do what they said they were going to do is amazing to me. I think that is modus operandi. But a lot of people are telling me they saw the video on DVD and really responded to it and don’t understand why it wasn’t released and I say, ‘You’ll have to talk to the Weinsteins [about that], I can’t help you.'” Whitaker even tried to get them to sell it to another distributor but apparently their asking price was a bit on the high side.

We haven’t been excited by anything Whitaker’s been attached to in a long time, and the forthcoming sci-fi-comedy-thriller thing “Repo Man” isn’t changing that, but the “Satchmo” biopic could be a good move into getting the actor back into his Oscar-winning step.