Girls Trip star Tiffany Haddish has joined Ike Barinholtz in The Oath, a satirical thriller Barinholtz wrote and is also directing.
Also boarding the ensemble project are Star Trek star John Cho, Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia), Billy Magnussen (Ingrid Goes West), Meredith Hagner (Search Party), Jon Barinholtz (Superstore), Nora Dunn (The Guilt Trip), and veteran actor Chris Ellis (Murder in the First).
QC Entertainment, one of the companies behind Get Out, is financing and producing the movie, which begins shooting this week.
The timely script, set in a politically divided America where citizens have to take an oath of loyalty, focuses on a man has to make it through the Thanksgiving holiday without destroying his family.
Character details for Haddish and others are being kept under wraps.
Haddish also joins Oath as an executive producer.
Sean McKittrick, Ray Mansfield and Edward H. Hamm Jr. are producing the pic. Also producing are Barinholtz, Andrew Robinson and David Stassen.
QC and UTA are co-repping the film for domestic sales.
Haddish appeared in such movies and shows as Keanu and The Carmichael Show before breaking out in a big way with this summer’s surprise hit, Girls Trip. The Universal comedy grossed over $115 million. The actress recently nabbed a role in the Kevin Hart comedy Night School. Haddish is repped by APA, Principato-Young and Del Shaw.
Cho, who plays Sulu in the Star Trek movies, is coming off of starring in the acclaimed drama Columbus, which was nominated for several Independent Spirit Awards. He is repped by UTA, 3 Arts Entertainment and Morris Yorn.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Universal Pictures acquired On the Run, an action-comedy pitch by Aeysha Carr. Kevin Hart has attached to star and he will produce through his Hartbeat Productions banner with Will Packer and his Will Packer Productions label.
Carr will write the script. She is currently scripting the Kevin Hart/T.I.-produced show The Studio, which is in development at Showtime, and she is supervising producer and a writer on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She was supervising producer and writer on The Carmichael Show.
In On the Run, Hart will play a hit man whose assignment goes awry when the target isn’t who he expects. Hart has Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Night School coming. Packer and Hart have teamed together before on the Ride Along and Think Like A Man franchises.
Kevin Hart is about to hitch a ride on satellite radio.
Laugh Out Loud, the digital comedy network formed in a partnership between Hart and Lionsgate, is launching a full-time channel on SiriusXM early next year.
The Laugh Out Loud channel on SiriusXM is slated to debut sometime in the first quarter of 2018. It will feature a weekly show hosted by Hart, along with stand-up routines, comedic interview shows, and other programming featuring what LOL says will be a “selection of diverse comedic voices.”
Lionsgate and Hart launched the Laugh Out Loud streaming-video service in August, featuring original scripted and unscripted comedy series, stand-up specials, licensed programming, and live broadcasts. According to Lionsgate, in the first 30 days, the LOL app was downloaded more than 500,000 times.
“SiriusXM is the perfect partner to introduce a whole new audience to our Laugh Out Loud brand,” Hart said in a statement. “The world will soon discover that — believe it or not — I’m even funnier on radio.”
SiriusXM had 27 million paying subscribers and 5.2 million paid-promotion listeners as of the end of the third quarter of 2017. The company is 69% owned by John Malone’s Liberty Media.
Kevin Hart “is an unparalleled entertainer,” said Scott Greenstein, SiriusXM’s president and chief content officer. “SiriusXM is excited to have Kevin create a new channel that showcases his many talents and features other comedy voices chosen by Kevin.”
Hart is represented by UTA and 3 Arts. He next appears in Sony Pictures Entertainment’s “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” debuting on Dec. 20, alongside co-stars Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black and Karen Gillan.
Source: Variety
Regina Hall has been added to the cast of the upcoming Shaft remake.
According to Variety, she will be a former love interest of Samuel L. Jackson’s John Shaft and the mother of Jessie T. Usher’s younger Shaft.
She also joins Richard Rountree, who is reprising his role as the original Shaft, and Alexandra Shipp who is the love interest of Usher’s Shaft.
The film “follows Usher, a nerdy FBI agent who, after his friend dies under suspicious circumstances, launches his own investigation, reluctantly enlisting help from his estranged father — the legendary, stuck-in-the-’80s-but-still-cool John Shaft.”
It is a part of a groundbreaking Netflix deal, with the streaming giant paying “more than half the film’s high $30 million budget, in exchange for international rights and the ability to put the film on its streaming outside the U.S. two weeks after New Line releases theatrically in the United States.” This model could set a standard for “urban-themed” releases (READ: black) that don’t do well as well overseas. This is important because Netflix international audiences will be able to hop on this not too soon after it is hot in the U.S.
It is set to premiere on June 14, 2019.
Source; Variety, Shadow & Act
Michael Che just made comedy history- and television history.
The Saturday Night Live comic and writer, most known for hosting the Weekend Update sketch/show, had been tapped as SNL’s new co-head writer, along with his Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost.
Jost was a co-head writer for seasons 38, 39, and 40, while this is Che’s first time in the role.
He is the very first person of color to be a Saturday Night Live head writer.
He first joined the show in 2013.
Source: Shadow & Act
The 2017 Black List was announced this morning, and with it came the news that Will Smith is set to produce a movie about Michael Jordan’s short-lived baseball career.
In The Prospect, written by Ben Epstein, Michael Jordan uses a year as a baseball prospect to find himself after his father’s death. James R. Jordan Sr. was murdered by two men on the side of the highway in July 1993. In February 1994, four months after the first of his three retirements from the NBA, Michael Jordan signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox.
Smith will produce via his Overbrook Entertainment banner along with Andrew Lazar (American Sniper) of Mad Chance Productions. It’s unlikely the 49-year-old Smith would play Jordan, who was 31 years old when he took the field.
Epstein previously wrote You Get Me, a Netflix thriller starring Bella Thorne and Halston Sage. The Prospect received seven votes on the Black List, which chronicles the best-unproduced screenplays each year.
Source: The Tracking Board
Recently on an interview with the infamous The Breakfast Club, comedian and actress Tiffany Haddish talked about her newfound fame, old bullies, her new book, and more.
Watch the interview below;
In a competitive situation, ABC has landed a multi-camera comedy co-created and executive produced by Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, Julie Bean (Grown-ish) and 30 Rock alum Alec Baldwin. The network has given a straight-to-series order to the project, which is being developed as a possible starring vehicle for Baldwin. ABC Studios, where Barris, Baldwin and Bean are under overall deals, is the studio.
Written by Barris and Bean, who will serve as showrunners, the untitled project is described as a classic dysfunctional family comedy series about a stuck-in-his-ways, opinionated, fading TV star who moves in with his progressive daughter, her girlfriend and the child they are raising together.
While ABC didn’t pick up to series any of its multi-camera pilots in May and opted not to renew its existing multi-camera series, the network nabbed a revival of classic 1990s multi-camera sitcom Roseanne, which will air later this season and has put a number of multi-camera projects in development for next season. The Barris/Bean/Baldwin comedy also is eyed for a premiere next season.
Under his ABC Studios overall deal, Baldwin, who hosts ABC’s Match Game revival, is in negotiations to headline a talk show for ABC based on his radio show and podcast Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin.
Baldwin won two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, and record-setting six SAG Awards for his role as Jack Donaghy on NBC’s 30 Rock. He is coming off a Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series Emmy for his Donald Trump impersonation on Saturday Night Live. He is repped by CAA.
Barris is creator/executive producer on ABC/ABC Studios’ Black-ish on ABC and its upcoming spinoff series Grown-ish on Freeform. Black-ish this morning landed two more Golden Globe nominations, best comedy series and best lead actor in a comedy series for star Anthony Anderson. The acclaimed single-camera comedy won a Golden Globe last year for female lead Tracee Ellis Ross. Barris, who also co-wrote this year’s feature comedy hit Girls Trip, is repped by CAA, Principato Young, and attorney Gregg Gellman Yorn.
Under her ABC Studios deal, Bean serves as an executive producer on Grown-ish. She previously worked as a co-executive producer on ABC/ABC Studios’ American Housewife. Both she and Barris have multi-camera comedy experience. They worked together on The Game. Bean also has done stints on CBS’ Mike & Molly and NBC’s NewsRadio, Barris on Girlfriends.
ABC Studios and its cable/digital division ABC Signature received 5 Golden Globe nominations this morning, two each for Black-ish and Showtime’s SMILF, and one for ABC drama The Good Doctor, a co-production with Sony Pictures TV Studios.
Source: Deadline
On this day in comedy on December 11, 1967, Comedienne and Actress, Mo’Nique Angela Imes-Jackson born in Woodlawn, Maryland.
The fourth child of a drug counselor father and engineer mother, Queen Monique Angela Imes became an example of perseverance, strength and the ability to excel. Once her brother, Steve, directed her to her destiny by daring Mo’Nique to get on stage at an open mic comedy night and from there it was no looking back. Mo’nique put a spin on her name and a twist of being a big female comedian. Pride in her size was her mantra and she put out product and a message to have other plus size women join her crusade. After cutting her teeth in a Baltimore comedy spot she ran, Mo’Nique starred in a movie “Phat Girlz”. She put out a cook book entitled, “Skinny Cooks Can’t Be Trusted”. She parodied a Beyonce’s dance number, “Crazy In Love” with other large females at the 2004 BET Awards and she made big women proud of themselves in the process. Be who you are and love you was the theme and it was long overdue.
Many were taken by surprise by her seemingly rapid ascension. Having already taped “Def Comedy Jam”, her second appearance got an unexpected two-fold jolt. The show’s producers felt her choice of material did not serve her well and decided not to air it. That same night she was plucked up by “Moesha” show co-creator, Ralph Farquhar for the role of Nikki Parker, Countess Vaughn’s mother on “Moesha” and the spin-off “The Parkers”.
“The Parkers” made Mo’Nique a household name and lowered the draw bridge to the Queens of Comedy Tour and concert film, radio (“Mo’Nique in the Afternoon”), more television (“Showtime at the Apollo”, “Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School”, “The Mo’Nique Show”), a documentary (“I Could’ve Been Your Cellmate”) more films (“3 Strikes”, “Domino”, “Soul Plane”, “Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins”) and a gang of awards including SAG, Golden Globe, BAFTA and the coveted Academy Award for her searing performance as an abusive mother in the highly acclaimed motion picture, “Precious”.
By Darryl “D’Militant” Littleton
Check out this clip:
While there still isn’t a live-action, Miles Morales Spider-Man film in the works now, those who have seen Spider-Man: Homecoming know that the door is open for the Black latino webslinger to be introduced in a future iteration.
Until then, Sony has developed an animated feature with Morales as the center, with The Get Down star Shameik Moore as the voice. It is titled Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and will be released Christmas 2018.
A first-look teaser trailer dropped on Saturday at the Comic-Con Experience CCXP17 in São Paulo, Brazil, and it seems to be a visually stunning animated fare to say the least.
It also seems to follow its comic book continuity, showing the grave of Peter Parker (Morales took over the Spidey mantle after Parker’s death).
The film is directed by Bo Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman. The screenplay is from Phil Lord. It is produced by Avi Arad, Amy Pascal, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Christina Steinberg.
Source: Shadow & Act