Queen Latifah will star in the romantic comedy "Just Wright" for Fox Searchlight.
Project had been set up six years ago at Disney but was put into turnaround and picked up by Searchlight.

Dubbed a modern-day Cinderella tale, story centers on a female physical therapist who falls in love with a basketball player while helping him recover from a career-threatening injury.

Searchlight, which recently teamed with Latifah on "The Secret Life of Bees," is eyeing a late May start date.

Latifah and her Flavor Unit partner Shakim Compere are producing alongside Debra Martin Chase.

Film marks the second romantic comedy that Latifah has toplined. Paramount's "Last Holiday" repped her previous foray into the genre.

The "Hairspray" star is repped by WMA.

Variety

Ice Cube New flick

Ice Cube has set as his next star vehicle "Ride Along," an action comedy that New Line Cinema will put into production this summer.
Cube has come aboard with his Cube Vision partner Matt Alvarez to produce, and he will do a quick rewrite while New Line sets a director and co-star.
Cube will play a rogue cop with a soft spot for his sister. When she reveals she's engaged to an upper-crust white psychiatrist, the cop sets out to destroy the relationship by inviting his future brother-in-law on a ride-along.
Chris Bender and JC Spink will be executive producers, and Larry Brezner also will be involved in a producing capacity. Greg Coolidge wrote the script, and Steve Faber and Bob Fisher did a rewrite.
"Ride Along" will be Cube's first film for New Line since 2002's "Friday After Next," which he produced with Alvarez.
The deal comes as Cube and Alvarez search for a distributor for his latest starring effort, "Janky Promoters." The film, which was independently financed by Comerica, was originally set for distribution at the Weinstein Co. That deal went by the wayside recently, and distributor screenings began late last week. ENDS

Hollywood Reporter

HOLLYWOOD -- Turner Networks has entered into several movie-licensing deals with Lionsgate over the past several weeks, giving the cabler the first network TV rights to Tyler Perry-produced pics "Madea Goes to Jail" and "The Family That Preys," as well as a trio of action titles starring Jason Statham: "The Bank Job," "Transporter 3" and the upcoming "Crank: High Voltage."
Licensing pacts will make Turner's TNT and TBS the first nonpay TV outlet to run these pics starting in 2011 (2010 for "The Bank Job").

Collectively, these films have garnered nearly $300 million in worldwide box office, not including the pending performance of the soon-to-be-released "Crank" sequel.

With the addition of "Madea Goes to Jail," which drew nearly $90 million in domestic box office, as well as "The Family That Preys" (more than $37 million in domestic B.O.), Turner now has first-window rights for six of Perry's seven Lionsgate releases, and it has second-window rights for the one it does not, "Madea's Family Reunion" (BET recently picked up the first window for that title).

"They have a vested interest in Tyler Perry's world," noted Rand Stoll, exec VP of TV for Lionsgate, pointing out that Perry-produced, Debmar-Mercury-distributed series "House of Payne" and "Meet the Browns" runs on TBS.

The licensing deals also include second-window rights starting in 2012 for comedies "Disaster Movie" and "My Best Friend's Girl," which together took in more than $70 million in worldwide B.O.

Officials for both Lionsgate and Turner declined to state the overall value of these licensing pacts. However, sources familiar with movie-rights negotiations said first-window rights compensation is typically based on 10%-12% of total box office performance, while second-window rights usually run 3%-5% of total B.O.

Hollywood Reporter

The Game

The Game": an hourlong dramedy?

With the CW expected to complete its exit from the half-hour comedy genre at the end of this season, the creator/executive producer of one of the network's two remaining comedies, "The Game," is mulling turning it into an hourlong series. Mara Brock Akil is expected to pitch the idea to the CW brass this week.

A show switching genres is extremely rare. (In 1999, Fox launched the short-lived "Ally," a half-hour version of David E. Kelley's hit hourlong dramedy "Ally McBeal.") However, for "Game," such a transformation would actually make sense creatively. As a hybrid multi/single-camera series with no live audience, "Game" has a single-camera feel and already plays like a half-hour dramedy as it mixes comedy with drama more than a traditional sitcom does.

Still, keeping the three-year-old "Game" on for another season is considered a long shot. Once a promising newcomer airing behind "Girlfriends," the series that spun it off, "Game," as well as CW's comedy "Everybody Hates Chris," have been relegated to the low-rated Friday night, where "Game" has averaged 1.9 million viewers and a 0.8 rating in adults 18-34 this season.

Additionally, an hourlong "Game" wouldn't necessarily mesh well with CW's other dramas, which are skewing younger and far less urban, and a format switch after three seasons also would complicate a potential syndication run of the show.

Hollywood Reporter

TI on CNN

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