With 2015 film Chi-Raq streaming on Amazon, Spike Lee is set to give another service a chance with a TV remake of his breakout 1986 feature film She’s Gotta Have It. Netflix reportedly ordered 10 episodes of a proposed She’s Gotta Have It series. Lee plans to direct all the episodes himself. The original film followed the adventure of a young woman who enjoys juggling her three lovers and doing whatever she can to embrace her freedom.
“She’s Gotta Have It has a very special place in my heart,” Lee said in a statement, as only he could. “We shot this film in 12 days (2 six day weeks) way back in the back back of the hot summer of 1985 for a mere total of $175,000. Funds that we begged, borrowed and whatnot to get that money. This is the 1st 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.
“Now with the passing (August 8th) of the 30th anniversary, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. We are getting an opportunity to revisit these memorable characters who will still be relevant and avant garde 3 decades later. With all that said it was my wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, producer in her own right, 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. Tonya saw it plain as day. I didn’t.
“We are hyped that Netflix is onboard with this vision as Nola Darling, Mars Blackmon, Jamie Overstreet and Greer Childs do da damn thang now, today in da Republic of Brooklyn, New York.”
Lee’s groundbreaking film helped usher in the American independent film movement of the 1980s, and paved the way for other Black filmmakers.
