Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Whoopi Goldberg join Tyler Perry's 'Colored Girls' cast

Whoopi Goldberg

Credit: AP Photo

Tyler Perry has announced that Whoopi Goldberg plus singing stars Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey are joining his cast in "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf."

According to Black Voices, other names to join include Phylicia Rashad, Jurnee Smollett, Kimberly Elise, Kerry Washington, Loretta Devine and another singer-actress, Macy Gray. The project will be the film adaptation of the Ntozake Shange poem-play featuring 20 African-American women speaking on the issues they face in modern society. It debuted in 1975 and made its way to Broadway in 1976.

Lensing starts in late June for what Perry estimates will be a winter 2010/2011 release. The announcement was made last night as the director-actor-producer promoted the premiere of "Why Did I Get Married Too?".

"Don't worry, Madea won't be in it," Perry told HitFix of the film late last year.  Perry re-interpreted it so that each woman will have her own story, and "all of their lives cross. It's sort of like 'Crash.' They're all on a collision course to meet each other. In the middle of the movie, one of the women has just started a For Colored Girls center, where women go through this 12-step program of healing from relationships and everything. So a lot of the poems happen in this center, when all of these women come together.

Absent from the final cut are wishlist actresses Halle Berry, Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce Knowles.

"For Colored Girls" is the first project made under Perry's new 34th Street Films, under Lionsgate.