Marvin Gaye biopic slated to shoot later this year

British director Julien Temple is set to make a biopic, tentatively titled Sexual Healing, about legendary soul singer Marvin Gaye. The film is due to begin shooting in Ostend, Belgium later this year.

EMI, which holds the rights to Gaye’s music, is understood to be ready to give the greenlight to the project.

The story will focus on the Midnight Love album (including the song Sexual Healing) that Gaye recorded in Brussels in the early ’80s. At the time, Gaye - who was living in Ostend - was considered a spent force - a drug addict who had lost the confidence of the record companies. Against the odds, Gaye recorded what many believe to have been his greatest album.

Here in Berlin, Jean-Luc Van Damme, producer and managing director of Banana Films (the outfit behind Goodbye Bafana), revealed details of the $8 million Sexual Healing. Jimmy De Brabant of Delux Productions in Luxembourg is also on board.

Frederick Bestall for Auric Entertainment Pty. Ltd. is producing.

The film will be financed through the Belgian tax shelter and Luxembourg’s CIAV. The producers also aim to tap a regional fund in Belgium.

They are in discussions with a leading US sales company to represent the project.

“It has been a long fight,” Van Damme says of the five year battle to bring the Marvin Gaye film to the big screen.

Sexual Healing is one of several eyecatching projects that Banana Films is developing. The company, founded in 1994, is also pushing
ahead with a new $13 million 3D Salvador Dali biopic, Dali 3D. Alan Cumming has signed up to play the Spanish surrealist artist and Judy
Davis as his wife Gala. Bestall is the lead producer on that film, which will start shooting in Cologne on Sept 1 with Aquafilms of Germany. It is an official Australian-German co-production.

The film is scripted and will be directed by Philippe Mora and is being put together as a coproduction between Australia and Germany.

Banana is also preparing $16 million action movie Wireless which Van Damme is producing with Toronto-based Ken Nakamura.