New Movie Deal: Keenen Ivory Wayans Set for ‘It Takes a Village’
CBS Films and Columbia Pictures are teaming to acquire It Takes A Village, a comedy pitch that Keenen Ivory Wayans will write and direct about a 30-something white single career-obsessed woman who decides on a whim to adopt a child from a South Pacific island–and comes home with the tribe’s chief and seven elders who’ll stay until she proves she’s mommy material.
Todd Garner will produce with Wayans and Rick Alvarez.
It took two studios to make the deal for It Takes A Village. The deal that UTA brokered for Wayans is mid six-figures upfront, but contains aggressive progress to production stipulations: after Wayans turns in the script, the studios either make it or the reps take it elsewhere. Wayans, who last directed the 2006 comedy Little Man, hopes to make this his next film. CBS Films chief Amy Baer, who spent most of her career at Columbia, put the pact together with Columbia co-president of production Doug Belgrad, who worked closely with Wayans on White Chicks.
