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Film
Queen Latifah Inks Deal with Focus Features and Rogue Pictures
posted on Apr 17, 2006
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Queen Latifah has inked a first-look deal with Focus Features and its genre arm, Rogue Pictures, to develop low- to medium-sized budget films under her Flavor Unit Entertainment banner.
Flavor Unit, Latifah's 17-year old Jersey City, N.J. based entertainment company, is run by the rapper-turned-actress and her partner Sha-Kim Compere. The company's producing “Bringing Down the House,” “The Cookout”and “Beauty Shop.” Clients of the company’s management division incude Oscar-nominated actor Terrence Howard and Queen Latifah.
Already under development and included in the deal is “Reality Sucks,” screenwriter Michael Sinder’s spoof of the reality genre; and “Horror in the Hamptons,” a slasher flick scripted by Alex Mirkin.
The first feature project in the deal is Rogue Pictures’ “Welfare Queen,” based on the autobiography by Dorothy Woods, who scammed the welfare system for a fortune. Woods pocketed nearly $400,000 from the public assistance system. She purchased a mansion and Rolls Royce, and was later convicted to 8 years behind bars. The film will be written by Abdul Williams and co-produced with Tracey Edmonds' Edmonds Entertainment. Latifah is set to star.
"This is the first major deal we've signed with a studio, and we did it because we felt confident we could go from 'Welfare Queen' to 'Horror in the Hamptons,' which is a script by Alex Mirkin about a bunch of 16-year-olds chopping each other up," Latifah told Variety. "We get our hands on a lot of material we can do well, and our dream is to work up to producing three movies a year. The deal isn't based on me being in every film."
Latifah can currently be heard voicing a mammoth in "Ice Age: The Meltdown." She was seen earlier this year in the comedy "Last Holiday." Next up, the Oscar nominated actress (“Chicago”) will star in “Stranger than Fiction” and alongside John Travolta in the "Hairspray" remake, due to begin production this fall.
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