Mary J. Blige signs up for ‘Body Cam’ movie thriller

US singer and actress Mary J. Blige. Image: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Well known as an R&B singer and rapper with eight platinum albums to her name, Mary J. Blige is to star in horror meets thriller project “Body Cam” following her Oscar-nominated performance in “Mudbound.”

After the tense Netflix post-war drama “Mudbound” put her on the awards circuit map, Mary J. Blige is now involved with a horror-thriller movie from Paramount.

She’ll be the lead in “Body Cam,” which focuses on the supernatural consequences that follow the murder of a black youth by two white police officers and an evil spirit that then begins to manifest itself within the LAPD.

Footage from a body-mounted video recorder was destroyed as part of a cover-up operation, and Blige will be playing a police officer involved in investigating the whole affair.

Directed by Malik Vitthal, who oversaw the John Boyega movie “Imperial Dreams,” the new film is described as a mix between 2017’s incendiary countryside community horror “Get Out” and the Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña police action movie “End of Watch.”

After several lower-profile parts in television and film over the previous 20 years, Blige broke through as an actress with her turn as Florence Jackson, wife of a farm laborer, in “Mudbound.”

The film was put forward for four Academy Awards, with Blige responsible for two of them — Best Supporting Actress and, with her two co-writers, Best Original Song — and those two nominations repeated at the Golden Globes; the Hollywood Film Awards had earlier named her recipient of the Hollywood Breakout Actress Award.

Blige followed “Mudbound” with a voice part in animated family comedy “Sherlock Gnomes,” a principal role in February 2019’s superhero series and graphic novel adaptation “The Umbrella Academy,” and is a producer on episodic dance drama “8 Count,” based on the life story of successful Canadian choreographer Laurieann Gibson. AB

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