Enough of this sports talk. Let's get down to serious business: Tony Award-winning actress playing dead divas. Nina Arianda, who recently nabbed best actress honors at the Tonys for her work in Venus in Fur, will play Janis Joplin in a biopic directed by Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene). "Joplin will be made for a budget under $20 million, with production to start early next year," notes Deadline. The film will also include "21 of Joplin's best-known songs."

Joplin's story, bastardized by Bette Midler in 1979's arguably overwrought The Rose, has been cast and recast numerous times in an array of projects that never took off. Names like Zooey Deschanel, Amy Adams, Renée Zellweger, and Pink (shudder) were bandied about to portray the noted summer-of-love icon who died at the too-young age of 27. But Arianda finally won the part. "I've never in my life seen an actress walk on a stage and convey the duality of vulnerability with overheated sexuality, which is what Janis was all about," exclaimed the film's producer Peter Newman.

But fret not, Deschanels and Zellwegers of the film industry! Given the right producer and Hollywood's infamous lack of ideas, there's always a possible film of Jenna Maroney's portrayal of Janet Jopler waiting somewhere in preproduction.

[Observer]