Lions Gate Films along with Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner’s 2929 Entertainment are set to co-finance and distribute Akeelah and the Bee, a story about an 11-year-old from South Los Angeles whose journey to compete in the National Spelling Bee unites her community.
Yeah, quite the tear jerker eh?
Anyway, the film will star Laurence Fishburne and Keke Palmer with Doug Atchison attached to direct his own script, which won the Nicholl Fellowship in 2000.
Atchison’s idea for the script came from watching ESPN’s broadcast of the Scripps Howard Spelling Bee and noticing that there were few inner-city children participating in the competition.
The story will hit lenses quickly with a late January production start.
