‘The Color Purple’: New Trailer Highlights Strength of Sisterhood

Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for The Color Purple, based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book and the musical adaptation of her 1982 novel.

The film centers on Celie (the younger version is played by Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and the adult version by American Idol alum Fantasia Barrino), a poor Black woman living in the American South of the early 1900s. The first trailer, released in May, showed Celie being separated from her sister Nettie (played by Halle Bailey and Ciara). Over the course of several years, the film explores Celie’s struggles as she yearns to find herself and her own joy.

The new trailer jumps between Celie and Nettie’s childhood together and Celie missing her later as she’s determined to reunite with her.

“I know my sister’s somewhere in the world,” Celie says via voiceover as viewers see an image of the older Nettie played by Ciara. “Someday, we’re going to meet again.”

The latest preview also highlights Danielle Brooks’ Sophia who wonders if Celie is perhaps too nice and confronts Celie’s husband, Albert “Mister” Johnson (played by Colman Domingo).

Celie is later shown telling Mister, who beats her, that she wants to be free from him.

“I’d die before I let that happen,” he says.

“Good. That’s just the going away present I’ve been needing,” she shoots back.

The latest preview also showcases some of the musical performances in the new film and features Taraji P. Henson performing the song “Push Da Button.”

The new musical version, which hits theaters Dec. 25, also stars Corey Hawkins and H.E.R.

Producer Oprah Winfrey, who starred in the 1985 film version (and earned an Oscar nom for her performance), has called the 2023 adaptation a “celebration of sisterhood” that’s “not your mama’s Color Purple.”

“As long as there is a need for people to feel what it means to be loved up… there will be a need for The Color Purple,” Winfrey has said. “I believe that in the future, this story just grows, and it never grows old.”

The movie musical comes nearly four decades after Steven Spielberg‘s acclaimed 1985 film, which also starred Whoopi Goldberg, Danny Glover and Margaret Avery and was nominated for 11 Academy Awards. In addition to Winfrey, Spielberg also returns to produce the new version, alongside Scott Sanders and Quincy Jones.