Netflix announced today that is has ordered a 10-episode series based on She’s Gotta Have It, the indie film that launched famed director Spike Lee’s career. The film turned 30 years old last month, Lee said in a statement — marking the perfect time to revisit the beloved characters who he claims are still relevant to audiences all these years later.
Lee will direct the series — marking his debut in the episodic medium — in addition to serving as creator and executive producer alongside his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, who will also executive produce. In fact, Lee claims that it was his wife “who had the vision to take my film from the big screen and turn it into an episodic series. It had not occurred to me at all,” he explained. “Tonya saw it plain as day. I didn’t.”
She’s Gotta Have It centers around a twentysomething Brooklyn artist seeking to navigate her identity, friends, career, and three suitors: a cultured model, a protective investment banker, and a hip hop-loving sneakerhead. “We shot this film in 12 days (two six-day weeks) way back in the back back of the hot summer of 1985 for a mere total of $175,000,” Lee said. “This is the first official Spike Lee feature film joint, and everything that we have been blessed with in this tough business of film all have been due to SGHI.”
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Lee is no stranger to the digital world, however. In February, his Chi-Raq feature film arrived on Amazon Prime as the first-ever offering from Amazon Original Movies. And in January 2015, he released Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus, which was funded via Kickstarter, and which premiered on Vimeo On Demand before it bowed in theaters.
The She’s Gotta Have It reboot joins other highly anticipated Netflix acquisitions, including an Amanda Knox documentary, a Justin Timberlake concert film, an Anne Of Green Gables series adaptation, and the highly-anticipated Haters Back Off — which marks the streaming giant’s first-ever series to star a digital influencer in the form of Colleen Ballinger-Evans‘ delusional diva, Miranda Sings.
