An update to my post yesterday… it looks like Winnie is indeed going to premiere at TIFF as Jennifer Hudson said in the radio interview I posted yesterday. It’s been confirmed this morning, as the festival released its Gala additions to this year’s lineup. S&A won’t be at Toronto this year unfortunately, though I really wanted to go. Next year is a certainty. But I should have eyes and ears present who’ll be feeding me info, which I’ll share here.

Here’s yesterday’s original post:

In the audio clip below, which features Jennifer Hudson in an interview with the hosts of Chicago’s WGCI Morning Riot program, on the 12th (last week Friday), the singer/actress/spokesmodel reveals that her long-awaited Winnie Mandela biopic, (Winnie) will make its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. She even gives an exact date – September 16th.

We’ve been tracking the TIFF lineup announcements, and, thus far, I don’t believe Winnie has been mentioned yet; however, there are still more titles to be announced, so J-Hud may have spoken a bit too soon, as I don’t believe this is officially public info yet.

Our last post on this was in June, when the real Winnie Mandela spoke to CNN, expressing her annoyances with the entire project, including the fact that J-Hud never met with her personally. At the time I said that there was no word on the film’s debut. Looks like now we know.

The trailer for the biopic, starring Jennifer Hudson as the titular character, and Terrence Howard as Nelson Mandela, was met with much ridicule and derision when we unveiled it last fall, to the chagrin of its producers, and maybe to the real Winnie Mandela as well, given her well-documented objections to the production of the film in early 2010, for which she was not consulted at all.

Here, J-Hud not only reveals that it’ll debut at Toronto, but she also talks about taking on the role, saying that she’s seen the film, and is happy with it and her performance: