When Ziggy Marley cast Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch as his parents in “One Love,” the long-awaited Bob Marley biopic, the three made a pact: If the studio didn't do right by them, they would jump ship. .
It turns out that it was not necessary to defect.
Paramount's “One Love” opened Wednesday higher than projected, taking in $14 million, the best Valentine's Day weekday gross, Deadline reported. The film also earned a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 95%, although it was less popular with critics, whose overall rating currently sits at 44%.
But it wasn't stats or earnings that led Ziggy Marley to his first film project, he told Billboard in an interview Wednesday. David Nesta “Ziggy” Marley, 55, is Bob Marley's eldest son and was just 12 years old when his father died in 1981.
“My father's story carries a message,” said the Grammy winner. “I believe now is the time to present this message of one love to the global view.”
“One Love” focuses on a formative chapter in Bob Marley's life that coincided with a period of fierce political divisions in Jamaica. The film chronicles the singer and political activist's near-murder in Kingston in 1976 and his subsequent trip to Europe to record and tour his ninth studio album, “Exodus,” released in 1977. The biopic concludes with the singer's return to Jamaica for One Love Peace. Concert in 1978, which attracted more than 30,000 attendees.
Ziggy Marley said that this stage of his father's life “made him decide what his purpose was.” The script quotes Bob Marley almost word for word: “If my life is for me, I don't want it. “My life is for people.”
“This is Bob Marley,” Ziggy Marley said. “We do not need [sic] tell a story from birth to death to know this.”
Still, there were some scenes that Ziggy Marley had a hard time parting with, including one where the Wailers fight and break up.
“When you start editing a movie, it develops and tells you what it wants to be,” he said, and scenes like this just “didn't fit.”
But in the case of the band's breakup, he added smiling, that in the future it will be published as a deleted scene.
Ziggy Marley said putting the film together was a negotiation between his vision and that of director Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Ziggy Marley first approached Green when he was still editing “King Richard,” the biographical sports drama about Richard, Venus and Serena Williams that earned Will Smith an Oscar in 2022. But it wasn't his work on “King Richard.” ,” which had not yet been published, caught the attention of Ziggy Marley. It was “Stone Cars,” a low-budget 14-minute short film that Green had filmed in South Africa almost a decade earlier.
“The fact that that It was what attracted him and made me realize, 'Oh, he wants something real.'” Green told Vogue in early February.
“I liked his authenticity,” Ziggy Marley told Billboard. “I liked the value, the look of it, and I liked that it was real to that culture.”
That authenticity carried over into the musician's relationship with the director, who was brutally honest with the singer from the moment he saw the first script.
“He's in it for something real,” Ziggy Marley said, “not like someone's coming to tell you what you want to hear or boost your ego, but working toward what's best for the movie.”
Still, Green was always respectful of the Marley family's commitment to “telling the story the way we wanted to tell it,” Ziggy Marley said.
That meant filming in Jamaica, where half the movie takes place (the other half takes place in England), and hiring mostly Jamaican actors, or actors with Jamaican heritage, including Lashana Lynch, who plays Rita Marley, the wife by Bob Marley.
Ultimately, the studio employed more than 400 Jamaican actors and crew and more than 1,800 background actors to conduct 25 days of filming on the island, said Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon CEO Brian Robbins. he said at the film's premiere on January 23 in Kingston.
Robbins also said Paramount made significant investments in Trench Town, the backdrop of Bob Marley's childhood, including building an outdoor learning pavilion and security booths at Trench Town Elementary School.
“In my heart, it was like Bob did this for the community,” Ziggy said.
While the film's somber scenes won over most moviegoers, including Rita, who shed tears during the film's premiere, the ones Ziggy says he loves the most showcase Bob Marley's unusual and often misunderstood humor.
“Those kinds of moments just make me laugh and say, 'Yeah, that's exactly how it was with Bob.'”
