2020 has been a complete mess. We've spent most of the year dealing with a global pandemic and everything from people's livelihoods to movie releases have been blown to hell because of it. While I don't think anybody is quite expecting the madness to magically end when the calendar shifts over to 2021 in a few days, we're probably all still very ready for this year to be over. Especially because it looks like 2020 isn't quite done messing with us yet. Creed lead singer Scott Stapp will be playing Frank Sinatra in a biopic about Ronald Reagan. That is clearly a sentence that only 2020 could write.
And yet, it appears to all be true. According to Billboard, the upcoming film Reagan, which will star Dennis Quaid as the man who would become America's 40th President, has tapped the lead singer of the band Creed to play old blue eyes. It doesn't appear to be a major role, but the film will contain a scene where Ronald Reagan visits the Cocoanut Grove, the famed Boston-area nightclub that was a popular spot for Hollywood elites in the 1930s. Frank Sinatra will be performing there in the scene.
According to the story, the scene in question will take place while Ronald Reagan is President of the Screen Actors Guild, a position he held between 1947 and 1951, and then again in 1959. There appears to be some playing with the timeline if that's the case, as the Cocoanut Grove nightclub burned down in 1942 in a famous fire that claimed the lives of nearly 500 people. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that a movie played with the timing of events for dramatic effect.
Regardless of exactly where in time this scene is set, Scott Stapp will be playing Frank Sinatra during the early part of the singer's career. And I guess that works. I mean Scott Stapp doesn't exactly strike me as looking like a young Sinatra, but I'm sure with the right wardrobe and a bit of makeup that can change. And it's not like every person who has ever played a real person has always been a dead ringer. The bigger question is, can he sound like Sinatra? And it does appear that Stapp will be singing as part of the scene. It's possible that's the extent of Sinatra's involvement in the story.
The idea of Frank Sinatra, one of the most popular and idolized performers in the history of music, being played by the lead singer of a band which is...not those things, is certainly something of a trip. It seems utterly bizarre. At the same time, who knows, maybe Scott Stapp will impress us all. We'll find out when Reagan is released next year.
