It is been spotted that veteran actress Jenifer Lewis, will star in and executive produce Ventura Boulevard, which Debbie Allen is said to direct, from a script written by Mark Alton Brown and Dee LaDuke.
Ventura Boulevard boasts as a darkly comedic homage to the 1950 Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard, starring Lewis as a self-deluded queen of 1970’s blaxpoitation movies who uses her money and sex to manipulate a young white scriptwriter.
Wilder’s film saw Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent movie star who draws an unsuccessful screenwriter, played by William Holden, into her fantasy world where she dreams of making a successful return to the screens.
Lewis’ Ventura Boulevard will be starred by Marc Shaiman, who has won Emmy, Grammy and also a five-time Oscar-nominee for his work on films like Sleepless in Seattle, The American President, and others.
“I am taking things into my own hands by producing ‘Ventura Boulevard. The Hollywood establishment isn’t going to finance a movie about a middle aged African-American diva who deceives and beds a young white man,” said Jennifer Lewis
With more than 300 movie and TV credits added to her resume, including most recently, Baggage Claim in fall 2013, and with Think Like A Man Too as well as The Wedding Ringer which due to release later his year, Lewis continues “I love being everyone’s favorite Hollywood mama, but I am ready to prove if you want something more, you have to make it happen yourself.”
Ventura Boulevard has united Lewis and Debbie Allen, who saw themselves at the sets of A Different World 20 years ago.
Allen is currently directing TV series like Shonda Rhimes’ Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal.
With the casting of the co-stars nearing completion, the project is said to start shooting in summer of 2014 and hit the screens by 2015.