Angela Bassett Directing Whitney Houston Lifetime Movie

It was bound to happen sooner or later: Lifetime has announced they are working on a movie about Whitney Houston’s life. What is unexpected, however, is who the network has tapped to direct the film: Angela Bassett, Houston’s 1995 Waiting To Exhale co-star. The Academy Award-nominated Bassett said of the project, which will mark her directorial debut: “I have such regard for both Whitney’s and Bobby’s amazing talents and accomplishments, and I feel a responsibility in the telling of their story.”

With a working title of Whitney Houston, Lifetime said in a press release that the film will follow the relationship between the late Houston, who died in 2012, and singer-songwriter Bobby Brown, “from the time they first met at the very height of their celebrity, to their courtship and tumultuous marriage. Throughout it all, difficulties followed the superstar couple while they dealt with the overwhelming rewards and consequences of the fame and fortune created by Whitney’s meteoric rise that would soon overshadow them both.”

There’s no word on casting yet, but film isn’t slated to premiere until 2015.

[Deadline]