If you've been not-so-secretly yearning for Taraji P. Henson to make another romantic comedy, well, prepare for the best news ever.
According to Deadline, Hidden Figures actress Henson will star in What Men Want, a movie about a woman who wakes up with the gift (?!) of reading the thoughts of every man around her. If you're thinking "Hey, didn't they already make that movie, but with Mel Gibson?", you're absolutely right. This will be just like that, but it already sounds way, way better.
What Men Want will be based on the 2000 Nancy Meyers film What Women Want, which starred the Daddy's Home 2 actor as Nick, a sexist advertising executive who's granted that mind-reading gift, but with women. Though he initially starts off manipulating the ladies around him for sex and career boosts (ew), he eventually realizes that he can use the power to understand the gender that he so often dismissed.
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Consider this movie — which already has a release date of January 11, 2019 — an improvement. Here, Henson's character, a sports agent, will use her newfound power to score a major contract with an NBA player — and shut down the boys club determined to stop her from getting ahead.
Henson is the perfect actress to retool a film that, let's be honest, has some flaws. (With few exceptions, the women that Nick "listens" to aren't exactly complex individuals.) The Empire star is all about breaking the mold in Hollywood, which, yep, includes letting women in on the action — just as her character in this new film is hoping to do in the sports world.
The new role is very on brand for Henson. What she wants is for women to be anything they wish to be. Speaking to Refinery29's Arianna Davis in 2016, Henson revealed why she was initially "angry" after reading the story of Katherine Johnson, the mathematician she portrays in Hidden Figures.
"[When] I heard Katherine's story as this brilliant mathematician and space scientist, I remember being very angry. Because somewhere along the way, someone stole a dream from me. I would go to my math and science classes as a kid and pick the desk all the way in the back of the room because I always expected myself to fail at those subjects, because I’m a girl. When, hey: I could've been a scientist! So I had to do this movie, because I don’t want another girl to walk around believing that BS."
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And we have to see What Men Want. Can January 2019 get here already?
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