In 1986, MTV hosted a “Win a Date With Prince” contest as part of a promotional push for the late music legend’s film Under the Cherry Moon. The winner was Lisa Barber, a 20-year-old hotel worker who saw her small hometown of Sheridan, Wyoming, become the center of a brief media frenzy when Prince traveled there to meet her. (The contest rules stipulated that he would premiere the film and perform a concert wherever the winner lived.) Now, the surreal episode is being turned into a feature film starring and produced by Elizabeth Banks, Deadline reports.
The movie will be based on a Daily Beast story from last year entitled When Prince Made a Chambermaid His Queen for a Day, which detailed the “coke-fueled chaos” that went on behind the scenes of MTV and Prince’s production in Sheridan, where “cattle outnumber people by more than two to one.” The film will focus on the stories of Barber and Robyn Riggs, a young publicist who was instrumental in putting the event together. According to Deadline, Prince himself will not be portrayed by an actor in the film, but his “presence will hover through” it. Read the original Daily Beast story here, and watch a brief snippet of footage from Prince landing in Wyoming below.