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Spike Lee looks to continue his journey into the world of television, having already set up a show based on his debut feature, She’s Gotta Have It, at Netflix. (The first season of that series will premiere on the streaming service on November 23.) Now, he is teaming with tech entrepeneur Chad Sanders for a dark comedy-thriller combo, potentially called ARCHER* after Sanders’ business development agency, Archer Genius Management. (* Not to be confused with the long-running FX animated series with the same name.)
After working four years at Google, Sanders was a partner and head of business development at Dev Bootcamp, a school for training coders that was sold for double-digit millions. He used that money to set up Archer.
Based on Sanders’ own experiences, the show will be about a 20-something African-American coding genius living in Brooklyn, referred to as a “young black Mark Zuckerberg,” who develops a dating app based on sexual chemistry.
Sanders will star in the series he created, as long as be a writer, director and executive producer on the show, but Lee will direct the pilot episode and executive produce the series through his prolific 40 Acres and a Mule production company. They’ll be pitching the project to a variety of networks with no specific plans for network television, cable or streaming.
Lee’s last film was the Netflix movie, Rodney King, about the deceased taxi driver whose brutal 1991 beating by the Los Angeles Police Department was captured on video; the acquittal of the police captured on video led to the famed L.A. riots in 1992.
Incidentally, the actual Zuckerberg, infamous CEO of Facebook, was not put in too favorable a light in Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s 2010 Oscar-nominated drama, The Social Network.
Sanders is repped by WME and managed by Oronde Garrett at Headshell Management, while Lee is repped by ICM Partners.
The news was reported exclusively by Variety.
Edward Douglas | East Coast Editor
