Tina Mabry and Gina Prince-Bythewood are set to adapt the NY Times best-selling novel “The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat.” Mabry will direct the film for Searchlight Pictures, from an original script by Prince-Bythewood.
The film adaptation of Edward Kelsey Moore’s debut “Supremes” novel follows best friends Odette, Barbara Jean and Clarice, who consider Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat diner a “home away from home” in their Indiana town. According to a synopsis, the trio (known as “The Supremes”) has “weathered life’s storms together for decades through marriage and children, happiness and the blues. Now, they will have to rely on their strong bond to survive their most challenging year yet as race, heartbreak and illness stir up the past and threaten to destroy their friendship.”
Temple Hill will produce the film, with Searchlight’s Senior Vice President of Production DanTram Nguyen, Director of Production Zahra Phillips and Manager Apolline Berty overseeing the project on behalf of the studio.
In 2018, Mabry and Prince-Bythewood teased plans for a collaboration while reflecting on their mentor-mentee relationship during an alumni spotlight interview for Slamdance.
“It is an adaptation that I wrote. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to direct and the question came up, ‘Who should direct it? And who do you trust?’” Prince-Bythewood said during the conversation. “I have an extremely tiny list, but you [Tina] were right at the top. But, you know, it’s one thing for me to say, ‘I think this woman can do it,’ but you had to go in and knock out that meeting, which you did. I mean, I heard you made them cry.”
Known for her work as a writer, director and producer on “Queen Sugar,” “Pose,” “Queen of the South” and “Proven Innocent,” “The Supremes” is Mabry’s first feature film since her acclaimed directorial debut “Mississippi Damned” in 2009. In 2017, Mabry won a DGA Award and a NAACP Award for the American Girl special “Melody 1963: Love Has to Win,” which she produced and directed for Amazon.
Prince-Bythewood — the trailblazing filmmaker best known for “Love and Basketball,” “Beyond the Lights” and this summer’s action hit “The Old Guard” — previously wrote and directed the film adaptation of “The Secret Life of Bees” for Searchlight in 2008.
Mabry is repped by Bill Douglass and Mark Ross at Paradigm and Tara Kole at Gang Tyre. Prince-Bythewood is repped by CAA, 3 Arts Entertainment and Del, Shaw, Moonves, Tanaka, Finkelstein & Lezcano.