Sony has released the first-look trailer to I Wanna Dance With Somebody. The film follows the life and legacy of the late Whitney Houston played by The End of the F—ing World star Naomi Ackie. Ackie will portray the legendary singer alongside Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown and Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis. Clarke Peters will be playing John Houston, Whitney’s father, and Tamara Tunie will be portraying Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother.
“My dream? Sing what I want to sing, be how I want to be,” Ackie’s Houston says in the trailer. “Reach as big an audience as I can.”
Naomi Ackie admits she was “very” nervous to play the “incredible, multifaceted” Whitney Houston. “She’s been elevated in my life for so long that it felt like an impossible thing to achieve at times,” she told PEOPLE. “But so many people told me the same thing: If I wasn’t scared and nervous, they’d think something was wrong with me. … The biggest challenge was letting my fear of the magnitude of this task take a back seat. Nothing good comes from sitting in fear for too long.”
I Wanna Dance with Somebody is written by Anthony McCarten, the screenwriter behind the 2018 Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, and produced by Clive Davis.
Ackie told the outlet that filmmakers “managed to fit in so many of our favorite songs” from Houston’s career into the film. They’ve also managed to include “parts of her life that we know about but through the scope of her own internal world.”
“Fans can expect to see her life like we see are our own. Ups and downs, triumphs and disappointments, all of it mixing together to make up a life,” said Ackie.
The biopic hits theaters Dec. 21. Take a look at the trailer to I Wanna Dance With Somebody below: