Latifah
Compere
Queen Latifah will star in "Welfare Queen" -- a fact-based story of a woman who scammed the welfare system out of a fortune -- as part of the first-look deal her shingle has signed with Focus Features and its genre division, Rogue Pictures.
Deal with Flavor Unit, the production shingle run by Latifah and Shakim Compere, will allow the duo to hatch modestly budgeted films for both Focus and Rogue. Focus production president John Lyons and Rogue prexy Andrew Rona made the deal.Latifah and Compere plan to develop several genre-spanning projects that include the Michael Sinder-scripted "Reality Sucks," a spoof of reality shows.
"Welfare Queen," based on the life of Dorothy Woods, will be produced by Flavor Unit with Edmonds Entertainment. Abdul Williams is writing the script.
"This is the first major deal we've signed with a studio, and we did it because we felt confident we could go from 'Welfare Queen' to 'Horror in the Hamptons,' which is a script by Alex Mirkin about a bunch of 16-year-olds chopping each other up," Latifah said. "We get our hands on a lot of material we can do well, and our dream is to work up to producing three movies a year. The deal isn't based on me being in every film."
Flavor Unit, which started 17 years ago as a music management business, gradually transitioned to features and has credits that include "Bringing Down the House," "The Cookout" and "Beauty Shop." Headquarters are a renovated firehouse in Jersey City, N.J.
"David Linde and John Lyons came to our little firehouse, and we came away convinced we could make films for the right price, and not just urban films," Compere said.
Latifah voiced a woolly mammoth in "Ice Age: The Meltdown" and will next star in "Hairspray."
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