Jen­nifer Hud­son socks it to us as Aretha Franklin in the Respect trailer

It’s not quite hyper­bole to describe Jen­nifer Hud­son as one of the great­est liv­ing singers on the face of the Earth. This much has been reflect­ed in her movie career as well, from her break­out role in Dream­girls to an ani­mat­ed stint in Sing to her unfor­get­table anthro­po­mor­phic turn in Cats — and now, once again with her lat­est role.

Today, the first trail­er for the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect socked it to view­ers online, show­cas­ing Hudson’s thou­sand-horse­pow­er pipes as the Queen of Soul. Smart­ly, the clip begins with the lead­ing lady roar­ing through the spelled-out cho­rus of Franklin’s biggest hit, which also serves to cue up the sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance to come.

Respect — the con­cept, not the song lyric — is an elu­sive quan­ti­ty in the life of a young Aretha Franklin, strug­gling to make her way in a world that val­ues her tal­ent while mar­gin­al­iz­ing her as a woman, and dou­bly so as a Black woman. From a girl­hood spent lend­ing her voice to the church choir through a young adult­hood micro­man­aged by her demand­ing father (For­est Whitak­er), she con­sis­tent­ly put her work ahead of her­self even as she expe­ri­enced the first flush­es of attrac­tion to the oppo­site sex.

The new film from Liesl Tom­my, a stage vet­er­an mak­ing her debut as a screen direc­tor, explores the famil­iar musi­cian-biopic theme of ​“find­ing your voice” as Aretha moves away from the pop­pi­er music that stalled her career in its ear­ly stages for a brassier sound. Own­ing the full force of her own pres­ence brought her rapid star­dom, and ulti­mate­ly earned her a place in the musi­cal fir­ma­ment for life.

But with bio­graph­i­cal movies about genius­es (the G‑word being dropped with­in the first minute of this trail­er) comes the peren­ni­al threat of falling into Walk Hard-styled cliché, such as mum­bling the lyrics to an immor­tal song as if think­ing of it off the top of one’s head. As long as Whitak­er doesn’t bel­low at his daugh­ter that the wrong kid died, things shouldn’t be too creaky.

Respect comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 13 August, and then the UK on 10 September.