Riley teased on Twitter that he has teamed with Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res to develop the series “I’m A Virgo,” which he describes as “dark, absurd, hilarious, and important,” Variety reports.
Jerome’s credit include Ava DuVernay‘s “When They See Us,” “Moonlight” and “Selah and the Spades.”
Check out Riley’s tweet about the project below.
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I have a show
about a 13-ft tall Black man who lives in Oakland.It’s called I’m A Virgo.
Jharrel Jerome is playing the lead.
I’m doing this w Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res. We haven’t decided on the network/streamer.
It’ll be dark, absurd, hilarious, and important. pic.twitter.com/pzOGDxMaaO
— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) June 22, 2020
Riley made his directorial debut with 2018’s “Sorry to Bother You” which starred Lakeith Stanfield. The film is also set in Oakland and follows Stanfield as a telemarketer who discovers the key to success is talking to customers using his “white-voice.”
When asked in a 2018 Pitchfork interview about how he wanted to represent the city in the film, Riley explained: “It’s more like how I want to represent life in general. It wasn’t like, “This is Oakland.” It was like, “This is life. This is where I grew up.” We start off with a character who is maybe going to lose his house, and you think you know what this movie is about. But no: He’s mainly worried about why he’s here, and he wants his life to mean something,” he said.Adding “That existential crisis is something you rarely see portrayed by black characters; the idea that people think about their own existence and that they have hopes and dreams is taken away from people of color in their representation. You take, say, even a movie where a character is a dope dealer: He’s bad, or even if he’s good—he’s not a full human, thinking about who he is in the scope of time. But everybody does that! So I think people who see the movie will relate to that even if they’ve never been here.”
Further details about Riley’s new series—including a release date and network—have not yet been announced.
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