“Love & Basketball” and “Shots Fired” star Sanaa Lathan will play the main character in a Netflix original film based on the book “Nappily Ever After” by Trisha R. Thomas.
Deadline reports that Tina Chism (“ATL”, “Drumline”) drafted the script with rewrites from Lisa Loomer (“Girl, Interrupted”), Adam Brooks (“Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”) and most recently filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood (“Love & Basketball”, “Beyond the Lights”).
The film will take the same name as the NAACP Image Award-winning book, which is an all-too familiar tale for natural-haired Black women:
“What happens when you toss tradition out the window and really start living for yourself? Venus Johnston has a great job, a beautiful home, and a loving live-in boyfriend named Clint, who happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous doctor. She also has a weekly beauty-parlor date with Tina, who keeps Venus’s long, processed hair slick and straight. But when Clint–who’s been reluctant to commit over the past four years–brings home a puppy instead of an engagement ring, Venus decides to give it all up. She trades in her long hair for a dramatically short, natural cut and sends Clint packing…”
Our hair often signals life, self or worldview shifts, starting the process of self-discover, transformation and growth.
Haifaa Al-Mansour (“Wadjda”) will direct the film, with Marc Platt, Tracey Bing (“Southside With You”), Jared Leboff and Lathan producing.
Production of the film begins this month in Atlanta.
This is at least Lathan and Bythewood’s third time working together, first on the film “Love & Basketball” then “Shots Fired”, the critically-acclaimed television show on FOX about race and police brutality.
Hopefully their storytelling magic will be the same as it was on these successful projects.
