“She’s Gotta Have It” celebrated its 30th anniversary in August, but its present was served up this month: Netflix has ordered a 10-episode series.
Billed as a “contemporary update,” per a Netflix news release on Thursday, the show revisits the 1986 movie that introduced Spike Lee as an auteur eager to experiment with filmmaking and storytelling conventions.
Written by Lee, the film follows Brooklyn-based Nola Darling (Tracy Camila Johns), a woman juggling her work as an artist as well as three men. One of her lovers is played by Lee, sporting those now-iconic giant, plastic-framed glasses.
Lee will direct every episode, the release says, and executive produce with his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee.
The groundbreaking filmmaker offered up his own words about the movie, which was filmed in Brooklyn, and series in the release:
“’She’s Gotta Have It’ has a very special place in my heart. We shot this film in 12 days (2 six-day weeks) way back in the back back of the hot summer of 1985 for a mere total of $175,000. Funds that we begged, borrowed and whatnot to get that money.
“This is the 1st official Spike Lee feature film joint and everything that we have been blessed with in this tough business of film all have been due to ‘SGHI.’ Now with the passing (Aug. 8th) of the 30th anniversary, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. We are getting an opportunity to revisit these memorable characters who will still be relevant and avant-garde 3 decades later.
“With all that said it was my wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, producer in her own right, who had the vision to take my film from the big screen and turn it into an episodic series. It had not occurred to me at all. Tonya saw it plain as day. I didn’t. We are hyped that Netflix is onboard with this vision as Nola Darling, Mars Blackmon, Jamie Overstreet and Greer Childs do da damn thang now, today in da Republic Of Brooklyn, New York.”
