Lena Waithe is heading to Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG). The mogul-in-the-making has inked “a big exclusive overall deal” with the studio, Deadline reports, which will see her and her business partner Rishi Rajani producing “new television programming through [their Hillman Grad Productions] for all platforms, including WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, external streaming services, cable, and the five broadcast networks.”
Waithe was previously under an overall deal at Amazon Studios. She “met with a number of studios and streamers” before WBTVG made it official “in a very competitive situation.”
“Warner Brothers just offered a different experience than what we were doing and being able to go to different places, which is really how we’ve operated anyway, so, it just really felt like a natural fit,” Waithe explained. “We enjoyed working with the people at Amazon, we enjoy working with the people at Warner Brothers, and that’s really ultimately what it is, it’s a relationship, it’s a commitment to linking arms and to doing work that you both believe in.”
Naomi Funabashi and Rajani will head up Film and TV at Hillman Grad going forward. They will also oversee WBTVG projects with Sylvia Carrasco and Rocio Melara.
Waithe’s first project under the new pact will be a narrative series based on “Hoop Dreams,” the seminal 1994 doc following two teen boys from inner-city Chicago as they pursue their goal of playing professional basketball. Waithe and Rajani will exec produce the adaptation with the original doc’s director-producer, Steve James, and producers, Peter Gilbert and Frederick Marx.
“’Hoop Dreams’ was a very important documentary in my life growing up, it was right in my own backyard,” Waithe, who is from Chicago, said. “I was seeing two young Black people with dreams bigger than their backyard and watching their journeys as they also struggled and tried to understand where they fit in their families. I always knew I wanted to bring that story back because ‘Hoop Dreams,’ to me, is so representative of what it means to have a dream, to be from a city that you really believe in, and you’re really proud to be from.”
They Emmy-winning writer wanted to make sure “Hoop Dreams” subjects William Gates and Arthur Agee knew about the adaptation before announcing it. “I didn’t want to announce or talk about ‘Hoop Dreams’ until they had been contacted by the filmmakers to know that we were doing this even though we aren’t going to base characters on them per se, we’re going to do something set in the 90s, some kids with a dream, so it will be in a similar vein,” Waithe said. “It was so important that they know that these stories will be handled with care, the title will be handled with care.”
Most recently, Waithe guested on “Big Mouth” and “The L Word: Generation Q.” She co-wrote and starred in this year’s “Master of None: Moments in Love,” which traces the relationship between Waithe’s character Denise and her wife (Naomi Ackie). In 2017, Waithe became the first Black woman to receive the Emmy for best comedy writing for “Thanksgiving,” the “Master of None” episode depicting Denise’s years-long coming out process.
Waithe created and produces series “Twenties,” “The Chi,” and “Boomerang.” She penned the screenplays for “Queen & Slim” and the upcoming music industry drama “Beauty.” Her other producing credits include “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” “Them,” and “Being Mary: The Mary Tyler Moore Documentary.” Now filming, the latter is expected to debut next year. New episodes of “Twenties” air Wednesdays on BET.
The founder and CEO of Hillman Grad, Waithe named the company after the fictional HBCU where “A Different World” was set.
“I want people from all walks of life to tell their story, people who aren’t able-bodied, people who are of the transexperience, people who happen to be Black and queer,” Waithe described the company. “We’re no longer the misfits, we’re the majority, and I think that is really what Hillman Grad is all about, to tell people that it’s your differences that make you unique, and will hopefully make you successful, and so, that’s what we want the company, in all areas, whether it be books, music, and obviously with film and TV as well, it’s really important that we’re doing something that hasn’t really been done in that marketplace before. We don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, just remixing with it.”
