LOS ANGELES, Calif. (Black PR Wire, Business Wire)–Lifetime will celebrate Black History Month in February with an impressive trio of world premiere movies featuring major award-winning casts, including Betty & Coretta, starring Golden Globe Award-winner and Academy Award-nominee Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got to Do with It?) and starring and executive produced by nine-time Grammy-winning recording artist Mary J. Blige; Twist of Faith, with six-time Grammy-winner Toni Braxton (Braxton Family Values), Mykelti Williamson (Justified) and David Julian Hirsh (Weeds); and Pastor Brown, featuring Salli Richardson-Whitfield (Eureka), Keith David (ER), Ernie Hudson (Oz), Tisha Campbell-Martin (My Wife and Kids), Nicole Ari Parker (The Deep End), Rockmond Dunbar (Sons of Anarchy) and Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights).
Betty & Coretta tells the dual real-life stories of Coretta Scott King (Bassett) and Dr. Betty Shabazz (Blige), wives respectively of Dr. Martin Luther King (Malik Yoba, New York Undercover) and Malcolm X (Lindsay Owen Pierre, The Killing Yard), as they create an unbreakable life-long bond after their husbands’ tragic assassinations. Kicking off Lifetime’s Black History Month celebration, Betty & Coretta will premiere Saturday, February 2, at 8 pm, ET/PT.
Twist of Faith, an interfaith love story about a single Christian mother (Braxton) and an Orthodox Jewish widower (Hirsh), whose mutual passion for music and singing draws them together, will premiere Saturday, February 9, at 8 pm, ET/PT.
Pastor Brown, which follows a young woman (Richardson-Whitfield) who returns home to take over as pastor of the family church after her father’s (David) death and is forced to face her sordid past and mend fences with her son (Jordan) and sister (Parker), will premiere Saturday, February 16, at 8 pm, ET/PT.
The premieres of Betty & Coretta, Twist of Faith and Pastor Brown come on the heels of Lifetime receiving 10 NAACP Image Award nominations, more than any other basic cable network, for Steel Magnolias, 2012’s number one cable movie telecast among key demographics (excluding miniseries), and Abducted: The Carlina White Story, which averaged more than four million total viewers. The network’s nominees include Steel Magnolias and Abducted: The Carlina White Story for Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special; Steel Magnolias’ Alfre Woodard, Jill Scott, Phylicia Rashad and Queen Latifah, as well as Keke Palmer of Abducted: The Carlina White Story, for Actress in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special; Tory Kittles and Afemo Omilami of Steel Magnolias for Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special; and Elizabeth Hunter (Abducted: The Carlina White Story) for Writing in a Motion Picture — (Theatrical or Television).
