Tonya Lewis Lee, film producer and wife of Spike Lee is preparing to bring a new film to the big screen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lee and partner Nikki Silver’s ToniK Productions have acquired the rights to Trell, a young adult novel written by former Boston Globe reporter Dick Lehr. The film will be adapted for screen by Chapter & Verse writer and director Jamal Joseph. Along with Lewis Lee and Silver, Epiphany Story Lab’s Michael Flaherty is also producing and Valerie McGowan will act as co-producer. Jennifer Gardner Trulson will act as executive producer.

Trell is inspired by the true story of one of Boston’s most infamous murder cases Lehr reported on as a writer for the Boston Globe‘s Spotlight Team. Trell focuses on a young black girl’s fight to get her wrongfully convicted father released from prison.

This is the latest acquisition for ToniK after the Sundance film, Monster, based on Walter Dean Myers’ novel of the same name.

Aside from Lewis Lee’s work on her husband’s Netflix show She’s Gotta Have It, other projects coming from Lewis Lee’s production company include the film Gallagher Girls, described by The Hollywood Reporter as “a Kingsman-esque action comedy about a secret spy school for girls. Also on the ToniK Productions’ slate is the TV show Gotham Diaries, based on a novel she wrote with Crystal McCrary Anthony in 2004. The company has also acquired the pilot Sexual Gangsters, based on a set of articles by Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales about New York teens living it up in the 1990s.

Trell

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