Hip-hop mogul and entrepreneur Shawn “Jay Z” Carter is adding the role of “producer” to his list of credits with the production of two new mini-series for NBC and Spike.
Each production is based on the true-life story of a black male in America— one of those males is Nicholas Irving, the U.S. Army’s first black sniper; the other is Kalief Browder, a young man who was locked in solitary confinement on Rikers Island at 16 and who later took his own life once released. Both projects are backed by Weinstein Television (of the Weinstein Company), who just announced a first-look deal with Jay Z.
According to the New York Times, the first series that will debut will be “TIME: The Kalief Browder Story,” which will premiere on Spike in January.
Kalief Browder was arrested at the age of 16 for allegedly stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers Island for three years, despite never standing trial or being convicted of a crime. Browder spent two of his years on the island in solitary confinement. He committed suicide two years after he was released from prison, in June of 2015.
The drama following Nicholas Irving will begin filming “early next year” according to a report from Page Six.
Sterling K. Brown, who recently won an Emmy for The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, will star as Irving in the six-part mini series. The show will be based on Irving’s 2015 memoir, The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers.
Irving was so deadly of a sniper he was nicknamed “the Reaper” and had an AR-15 rifle named after him.
An official title has yet to be released for this production.
