Joining the increasingly long list of filmmakers setting their sights on the small screen, Spike Lee has struck a deal with Netflix to turn his 1986 feature debut She’s Gotta Have It into a series. As reported by Deadline, Lee will direct all 10 episodes and co-produce alongside his wife, Tonya.
Shot in black-and-white and made on a shoestring budget, the original She’s Gotta Have It starred Tracy Camilla Johns as Nola Darling, an adventurous, non-committal 20-something living in Brooklyn and casually dating three radically different men—sophomoric Mars (Spike Lee), straight-laced Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks), and vain model Greer (John Canada Terrell).* The film was a critical hit upon its release, winning him the Youth Award for a foreign film at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, though it’s also been criticized by scholars and feminists like Bell Hooks as a reinforcement of misogynistic norms. Lee himself has more recently stated that he regrets including a pivotal scene in which Jamie rapes Nora, calling it “stupid” and “immature”—“It made light of rape, and that’s the one thing I would take back.”
Seeing Lee take on television in this way should be, at the very least, quite interesting to watch. In his statement about the venture, the director expressed excitement about presenting the four original characters “now, today in da republic of Brooklyn, New York,” which hopefully means that, just as the time period will be updated, so will Lee’s depiction of black female sexuality.
Correction, Sept. 15, 2016: This post originally misstated the name of Nola Darling.
