A clip of Jesse L. Martin as Marvin Gaye in Sexual Healing, the tentative title for a biopic about the legendary crooner, has surfaced.
The film focuses on Gaye’s life, music, decline into substance use, record label struggles, and death in the eighties. In the clip, we get a bit of S. Epatha Merkerson as Alberta Gaye, Brendan Gleeson as Freddy Couseart, Clarke Peters as Harvey Fuqua, Dwight Henry as Marvin Gaye Sr., Elarica Gallacher as Janis Gaye, Rowena King as Marilyn, and Vicky Krieps as Eugenie Vis.
A release date has not been announced for the film. Financing issues, as well as litigation from the Gaye family, reportedly suspended production.
Lenny Kravitz, who was originally supposed to play Gaye, reportedly dropped out of the production when his childhood friend Marvin Gaye III said the production was “shameful.”
“[They’re] trying to do a film about the low period in his life,” Marvin Gaye III told TMZ.
Recently the Gaye family has been in court over Robin Thicke’s hit “Blurred Lines,” which they say copies Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.”
