Lionsgate – An African American Studio?
by Guest Contributor Melissa Silverstein, originally published at Women and Hollywood
Lionsgate Studios, which has been in the very lucrative Tyler Perry business for several years now, is clearly on track to take up more of the slack in producing and distributing entertainment for the underserved African American market. They bought Push (now renamed Precious) out of Sundance with Perry and Oprah, and now has acquired the film rights for Ntozake Shange’s play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
The play was supposed to have been revived recently on Broadway with India.Arie but financing fell through. The play initially opened off Broadway in 1974, then moved to Broadway and was nominated for a best play Tony in 1977. A TV movie was made of the play in 1982.
Lionsgate “touted its ‘leadership role in producing and distributing a diverse roster of motion pictures about black characters.’” when announcing the film.
Interesting.
From what I can tell this is all about Tyler exerting some power. For Colored Girls will be directed by music video director Nzingha Stewart who adapted the screenplay. She has an affiliation with Perry having directed The Marriage Counselor which is a part of the “Tyler Perry Collection.”
It’s pretty interesting that the last indie studio is being this formal, deliberate and public about it’s strategy. Will it be a success? And can it maybe influence someone to think about women this way?
Lionsgate acquires ‘Suicide’ (Variety)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
cocolamala wrote:
yay, i hope that lionsgate carries out its mission to distribute and produce a diversity of movies about the black experience.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 10:46 am ¶
Robin wrote:
I LOVE that play (or choreo-poem, as Shange called it). I read it for the first time in high school and I found it incredibly moving, especially the segment that deals with domestic abuse. I’m so excited to hear that someone is turning it into a film. I hope it comes out well.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 2:35 pm ¶
[Embarcadero13] wrote:
If Lionsgate makes quality Black films with a diverse array of talented Blacktors and Blacktresses, I will eagerly welcome it with open arms… If it devolves into the [modern] BET minstrel show, then I will ignore it just as much as society ignores me.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 2:39 pm ¶
Just A Thought wrote:
I hope they continue to produce quality films. And it is a shame that it took Perry opening his own studio for a Hollywood studio to target the black audience.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 2:47 pm ¶
Hibbs4Prez wrote:
When Lionsgate greenlit “For Colored Girls” I was thinking the same thing about them being a studio openly going after the black moviegoer market. I can’t stand Tyler Perry but hey I do wish everyone luck and I do hope that they put together better quality films than Perry’s.
Yet as a black guy I will say that almost all these films are geared towards female viewers or at least dominated by female protagonists. And therefore much of my interest is tempered. Now since I’m a arthouse/indepedent/foreign film enthusiast , about half of the films I see have very strong female leads. And I like that because its so different than Hollywood. Nonetheless just as I’m not interested in seeing, exclusively, say, European films about female protagonists (thereby ignoring all those more from a male point of view) I am certainly just as disinterested in a studio that at this point seems interested in black films (majority black cast) in which the stories center around women almost exclusively. And before anyone jump on my case about Denzel, Will Smith, Morgan Freeman and other black male leads, I will say most of their films are no more “black movies” than most Halle Berry or Whoopi Goldberg films. Instead those are mainstream films with a black lead.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 6:25 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
Didn’t Lionsgate produce “Eve’s Bayou”? That had a fine ensemble cast. Admittedly, there were more important female parts (at least 2 adult women plus the lead character, a child), but Samuel Jackson had an excellent leading man part.
Posted 13 Apr 2009 at 11:23 pm ¶
JC wrote:
Lionsgate? The Vancouver BC studio which made the Saw series? I guess that’s really cool but are there AA’s in their management? There’s not a lot of black people in Vancouver and their past casting has been pretty white-biased like the rest of Hollywood, even though Vancouver could be called the first Asian city in North America. Well, good luck then. More quality film with minorities as the main cast the better.
Posted 14 Apr 2009 at 9:38 pm ¶