Spike Lee To Adapt His Feature "She’s Gotta Have It" As Series For Showtime

Spike Lee is revisiting his debut feature, 1985′s She’s Gotta Have It, on the small screen. Showtime has put in development a half-hour series adaptation that updates the film, with Lee set to write and attached to direct. The project is taking a new, contemporary look at the characters and willexplore Lee’s unique and provocative points of view about race, gender, sexuality, relationships, and the gentrification in Brooklyn.

Showtime is a fitting home for the project as the pay cable network has built a whole slate of half-hour series that straddle comedy and drama in the tone of She’s Gotta Have It.

Lee made his breakthrough with She’s Gotta Have It, which he shot in 12 days during the summer of ’85 on a budget of $175,000.  The film, starring Tracy Camilla Johns as a young, sexually independent Brooklynite who juggles three suitors (Tommy Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell, Lee), ended up grossing $7,137,502 at the U.S. box office. It helped usher in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and paved the way for other black filmmakers.

article by Nellie Andreeva via Deadline.com