Check out Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard as Winnie and Nelson Mandela in this new poster for their biopic Winnie.

Based on the book Winnie Mandela: A Life by Bezdrob, the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 16 and has already opened in Mandela’s native South Africa. Darrell Roodt, the lensman behind Sarafina! and Cry, the Beloved Country, stepped behind the camera to direct the story, which follows the “Mother of the Nation” through her marriage to Nelson Mandela, played by Howard.

The film does not yet have a North American release date.

This Just In: Cee Lo Green will join Jordin Sparks, Mike Epps, and Whitney Houston in the movie Sparkle — a remake of the 1976 film about a Supremes-like group of singing sisters.

In related news, R. Kelly has been tapped to pen the film’s score.

Production starts next month.

Whitney Houston is up for a new job…if she can stay sober for longer than five minutes.

Word on the Curb is the “So Emotional” hitmaker is negotiating to return to the big screen for the first time since 1996′s The Preacher’s Wife in Sony’s remake of the 1976 movie musical Sparkle.

Jordin Sparks will make her feature film debut in the movie about a trio of singing sisters. The former American Idol is attached to play the title character, a role made famous by Irene Cara in the original movie. Houston will replace Mary Alice playing her housekeeper mother, Effie. Comedian Mike Epps is also attached to star; he’s been cast as Satin, a stand-up comic who marries one of the sisters and gets her hooked on drugs.

TheWrap.com writes: “Sparkle focuses on three sisters who form a musical group and then have to contend with the ups and downs of stardom. Think the Supremes. Mara Brock Akil wrote the script and her husband, Salim Akil is directing. The latter worked with Epps on Sony’s Jumping the Broom. Debra Martin Chase is producing the Sony project…”

Production begins next month.

We’re getting our first look at Grammy Award-winning singer Mary J. Blige in the hotly-anticipated movie musical Rock of Ages. MJB will be taking the role of Justice Charlier, the owner of a gentlemen’s club, in the film inspired by the hits of the 1980s and adapted from the award-winning Broadway production of the same name.

Adam Shankman’s Rock of Ages — also starring Tom Cruise, Russell Brand, and Alec Baldwin — will open in theaters in Dec. 2012.

The story of pioneering slugger Jackie Robinson is bound for the big screen. Warner Bros. Films and Legendary Pictures is teaming up with Robinson’s widow to produce a biopic about the first black man to play Major League Baseball. The late sportsman was instrumental in breaking the color line of racial segregation in professional baseball when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

This isn’t the first time Robinson’s story has been adapted to the big screen. In 1950, Jackie Robinson starred in his own 76-minute biopic directed by Alfred E. Green. This time, Brian Helgeland, the Oscar-winning writer of L.A. Confidential, will pen the script and direct the production. Rachel Robinson, the athlete’s wife, will serve as a consultant — a job that’ll include looking at “the authenticity and richness” of each draft of the script. Robinson told Reuters Wednesday that she has wanted to bring her husband’s story to the big screen “for years — back when Sydney Poitier (now 84) could have played Jack.”

Robinson died of a heart attack in 1972. He was 53.

“He’d be proud because the impact of his legacy is important to America. But he’d also be a little bit shy. He was not a person who looked for celebrity.”

Any suggestions about who should play the baseball legend?

It’s been more than 15 years since the film version of best-selling author Terry McMillan’s smash novel Waiting to Exhale hit theaters, so it’s finally time for the sequel.

During a recent appearance on CBS’ The Talk, Exhale star Angela Bassett confirmed whispers that McMillan’s 2010 follow-up novel, Getting to Happy, will be made into a feature film with the original Exhale cast — Whitney Houston, Bassett, Loretta Devine, and Lela Rochon — returning to reprise their roles. According to Bassett, who is back in theaters in the wedding-themed comedy Jumping the Broom, Oscar winner Forest Whitaker will also return as director. McMillan, of course, will pen the Happy screenplay.

Waiting was a smash when it opened in 1995. It sailed to No. 1 at the North American box-office and made $14.4 million internationally.

Meanwhile, TMZ.com is reporting that Whitney Houston, has entered an out-patient rehab program “to get ready for a new movie.” A rep for the star says the R&B legend is seeking additional treatment for the substance abuse issues that have plagued her for more than a decade.

Will and Jada’s boy is the most bankable kid in Hollywood. He’s not old enough to drive and he’s so pint-sized, we doubt he can even reach the pedals, but at the ripe old age of 12, Jaden Smith has become the nation’s highest-paid child star, raking in an estimated $3 million from his role in 2010′s The Karate Kid remake.

It looks like Aubrey’s getting back to his roots. Former Degrassi: The Next Generation star Drake and Beyonce, whose acting credits include Obsessed, Cadillac Records, and the 2006 hit DreamGirls, have been added to the cast of the next Ice Age movie. The music superstars will join an ensemble cast, which includes Jeremy Renner, Wanda Sykes, Keke Palmer, and Jennifer Lopez, for voiceovers in the upcoming animated hit Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, producers with Blue Sky Studios said Wednesday. The newcomers will star alongside franchise regulars Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, and John Leguizamo.

Due in theaters on July 13, 2012, Renner will portray Gutt, a self-styled master of the high seas. Lopez will play Shira, a saber-toothed tiger who melts the heart of Diego, played by Leary. Romano returns as Manny while Queen Latifah reprises her role as the voice of Ellie, both mammoths.

The first three Ice Age films have grossed nearly $2 billion at the international box office. A holiday TV special and online game are presently in the works.

Word on the Curb has it that actor/comedian Kevin Hart — the pint-sized star of flicks like Little Fockers, Soul Plane, and Death at a Funeral — has been tipped to play Steve Harvey in Act Like a Man, the upcoming film adaptation of the entertainer’s 2008 New York Times bestselling relationship manual Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man.

And in this corner….Two of the most successful Black filmmakers in Hollywood history are at one another’s throats again. It seems Tyler Perry never quite got over a 2009 interview in which legendary lensman Spike Lee quipped that Perry’s films “harken back to Amos n’ Andy.”

“Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors, but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery,” Lee told 60 Minutes at the time. “I know it’s making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. … I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s ‘Meet the Browns’ and ‘House of Payne’), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”

After nearly two years of keeping his silence, Tyler unleashed the beast on Spike during a press conference for his latest comedy, Madea’s Big Happy Family, opening in theaters this weekend.

“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry fumed. “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘you vote by what you see,’ as if black people don’t know what they want to see.”

Oh, but he isn’t done yet. Tyler followed up with: “I am sick of him – he talked about Whoopi, he talked about Oprah, he talked about me, he talked about Clint Eastwood. Spike needs to shut the hell up!”

Perry furthered lit into Spike in an email to EUR’s Lee Bailey. The For Colored Girls director simply can’t understand why he finds his biggest critics among other African-Americans.

“I’ve never seen Jewish people attack Seinfeld and say ‘this is a stereotype,’ I’ve never seen Italian people attack ‘The Sopranos,’ I’ve never seen Jewish people complaining about ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ or Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie.’ I never saw it. It’s always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo,” he wrote.

“Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois went through the exact same thing; Langston Hughes said that Zora Neale Hurston, the woman who wrote ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ was a new version of the ‘darkie’ because she spoke in a southern dialect and a Southern tone. And I’m sick of it from us; we don’t have to worry about anybody else trying to destroy us and take shots because we do it to ourselves.”

We were with Tyler until he compared his Madea parodies to the plight of Zora Neale Hurston. Perry, sitcho ass down!