Award-winning playwright Winsome Pinnock, known for her work in the UK, is penning the screenplay for a biographical film about jazz performer Dinah Washington, Deadline reports.
The biopic will take place in London over two weeks following the success of Washington’s Grammy-winning hit song “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” in 1959. Danny Glover is set as an executive producer, with Angie Lee Cobbs of Rolling Fork Productions, also producing.
Known as “Queen of the Blues,” Dinah Washington was a jazz and R&B powerhouse with hit singles such as “This Bitter Earth,” “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)”, and “Teach Me Tonight.” She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, 30 years after she died in 1963.
Winsome Pinnock is a multi-award-winning Black British playwright and an influential voice in contemporary British theatre. Pinnock is noted as the first Black British female writer to have a play produced by The National Theatre. Recent major awards include the Alfred Fagon Award (2018) and the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama (2022).
Her stage plays include Rockets and Blue Lights, Glutathione, The Principles of Cartography, Tituba, Cleaning Up, Taken, IDP, The Stowaway, One Under, Beg Borrow or Steal, Water, Mules, Can You Keep a Secret?, A Rock in Water, Leave Taking, A Heroes Welcome, The Wind of Change, and Picture Palace. She is also the recipient of the George Devine Award, Pearson Plays on Stage Scheme Best Play of the Year Award and the Unity Trust Theatre Award, and she received a special commendation from the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
She was Senior Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University and writer in residence at Holloway Prison, Clean Break Theatre Company, Royal Court Theatre, Kuumba Arts Community Centre, Tricycle Theatre and The Royal National Theatre Studio. In 2020, her short play Una Calling was debuted online by The Globe Theatre as part of the Shakespeare and Race Festival. Winsome was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2020.
