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Netflix teams with Spike Lee for ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ series

By Kate Stanhope, hollywoodreporter.com

Netflix is now in the Spike Lee business.

The streamer has greenlighted a new series based on the filmmaker’s 1986 indie film She’s Gotta Have It, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Similar to the premise of the film, the show centers on Nola Darling, a Brooklyn-based artist in her late 20s struggling to define herself and divide her time among her friends, her job and her three lovers: the cultured model, Greer Childs; the protective investment banker, Jamie Overstreet; and da original b-boy sneakerhead, Mars Blackmon.

Lee, who created the series, will direct all episodes and executive produce with his wife, producer Tonya Lewis Lee. Netflix will produce the show, which was originally in development at Showtime in 2014.

The first season will run for 10 episodes.

Lee famously paved the way for African-American independent filmmakers when She’s Gotta Have It, shot in just 12 days, went on to gross more than $7 million at the box office. The film earned Lee an Independent Spirit Award for best first feature, a Los Angeles Film Critics Association New Generation Award and an Award of the Youth from the Cannes Film Festival.

The series pickup comes a month after She’s Gotta Have It celebrated its 30th anniversary.

The film starred Tracy Camilla Johns as a young, sexually independent woman living in Brooklyn who juggles three suitors (Tommy Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell and Lee).

She’s Gotta Have It will mark Lee’s first foray into series television. He joins a growing list of acclaimed filmmakers now headed to the small screen, including Woody Allen (Amazon’s A Crisis in Six Scenes) and David O. Russell, who is shopping his first series with stars Robert De Niro and Julianne Moore attached.

Lee’s other TV work includes HBO mini When the Levees Broke, Jerrod Carmichael’s HBO stand-up special Love at the Store and Spike Lee’s Lil Joints for ESPN. Lee, whose film credits include Inside Man, Malcolm X and 25th Hour, is repped by ICM and attorneys Robert Strent and Larry Shire.

TV adaptations of hit films continue to be a hot trend, with remakes of Lethal Weapon, The Exorcist, Training Day and Taken all scheduled to debut on the broadcast networks this upcoming season. Netflix’s other TV remakes include Wet Hot American Summer: First Day at Camp and an adaptation of Dear White People.

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