A series in development based on The Spook Who Sat by the Door has landed at FX.
Last year, it was announced that Lee Daniels Entertainment, with Fox 21 Television Studios, had optioned the novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door to develop a TV series based on the book by Sam Greenlee and the 1973 film.
When it was first reported, no writer was attached, but according to Deadline, who broke the latest news, Leigh Dana Jackson is adapting the work for television.
Jackson, who is a co-executive producer on Netflix’s upcoming Raising Dion, will also executive produce the series. And if the series presses forward to pilot order, it’s already set for Burning Sands and The First Purge director Gerard McMurray to helm it.
The novel was first released in 1969. The 1973 film starred Lawrence Cook, Janet League and Paula Kelly. In 2012, the movie was added to the National Film Registry.
As we reported last year, the potential series “looks at the fictional story of Dan Freeman, the first African American CIA officer hired by the agency in the late 1960s. The story chronicles the quest of Freeman, who was recruited as part of an affirmative action program. After a very competitive selection process, he trains in high-level combat and espionage. However, following this arduous training, this model recruit is rewarded with a post in the reprographics (aka photocopying) department, ‘left by the door’ as a token of the CIA’s ‘racial equality.’”
This is the latest in a blaxploitation boom, including a recent film reboot of Super Fly and a new Shaft film. Misha Green is also rebooting Cleopatra Jones. A Get Christie Love! pilot from Power creator was passed over at ABC, and the status of a Hulu reboot of Foxy Brown starring Meagan Good is unknown.
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