
‘Spades: The Play’ Cast
EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Sony’s 3000 Pictures has acquired the bestselling hot summer novel Dolly All the Time. Gemma Burgess will adapt the novel by Annabel Monaghan, and Temple Hill Entertainment is set to produce with Annika Patton overseeing it for the producer.
Dolly All the Time came out at the beginning of the summer and quickly hit the bestseller lists. Dolly Brick has never met a problem she couldn’t solve. Not when her mom left when she was 12, and not at 39 when she moves with her son back to Whitfield, RI for the summer to keep her dad and brother from losing the family home.
So when she comes across Stewart Whitfield — annoyingly handsome scion of the Whitfield family — with a flat tire and at the wrong end of a very public breakup, it’s in her nature to help. She comes away with an offer he suggests, which has her posing as his girlfriend. It ends up being more than either of them bargained for, because as public dinners and high society benefits turn into sunset boat rides and kisses, real sparks commence.
Deal has an uplifting backstory for the screenwriter Burgess, about handling adversity and writing yourself out of a jam. Burgess moved to the UK to be showrunner for My Lady Jane, the show she created for Amazon. Shortly after she moved her family to join her for a second season, Amazon canceled the show, despite superb reviews.
She stayed on the other side of the pond, and hustled. It has paid off. Burgess is currently adapting the K-drama phenomenon Crash Landing on You for Netflix and Skydance; she is adapting her short story Doomed as a series for Netflix with Busy B producing; she also created the series Smooth Criminals with Disney/20th and Drew Goddard; she’s got Liars for Searchlight; and Friends Like These for A24 and Gloria Sanchez. On the feature side, Burgess just finished writing Red, White & Royal Blue 2 for Amazon. She also continues to write novels (she’s had five of them published with Macmillan and Harper Collins that hit the bestseller lists). She is repped by UTA, Kaplan / Perrone Entertainment and Felker McGinnis & Ryan.
Sony-based Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 Pictures and Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey’s Temple Hill have had great success turning books into movies. For 3000, that includes Where the Crawdads Sing and People We Meet on Vacation, the latter an adaptation of the Emily Henry novel that is Emmy-nominated. Upcoming is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun directed by Taika Waititi and starring Jenna Ortega.
Temple Hill’s book adaptations range from The Twilight Saga to The Maze Runner and The Fault in Our Stars. 3000 Pictures and Temple Hull previously teamed on The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, The Longest Ride, The Hate U Give, and Love, Simon.
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EXCLUSIVE: Marcus Callender, best known for starring in Power and Wu-Tang: An American Saga, is taking his Spades: The Play on a national tour.
The stage play is set to run 76 performances across Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans and Miami this fall, following a four-week debut run in Harlem last November.
“I consider Spades: The Play a love letter to us and to the culture. I spent ten years writing this play, with love, care and intention poured into every word,” the director and playwright says. “Taking it on tour and bringing it directly to the people is exactly what it was created for.”
He continued, “Great theater doesn’t have to exist within the walls of traditional confines — it comes from raw storytelling and relatable experiences that can live anywhere. I had the exciting opportunity to shape what theater looks and feels like for the culture, on our own terms and to me, that’s the future of theater.”
Set in 2013 Harlem, and based on true events in Callender’s life, Spades: The Play follows a close-knit group of twenty-somethings as they gather for their weekly spades game at a friend’s house. As the cards are dealt, playful banter turns to honest conversation about love, friendship, and the blurred lines between the two. The production stars Broderick Clavery (Extrapolations) as “Gill” and Akilah A. Walker (The Chi) as “Cori,” with Derrick Alexander as “Andre” and Erin Nicole Washington as “Nefertiti.”

‘Spades: The Play’ Cast
The tour kicks off with an exclusive one-night-only performance at the historic Studio Museum in Harlem on September 3.
Each stop on the tour is hosted at a culturally centric venue. The run includes Culture House DC, a former Black church dating to the 1800s; Cam Kirk Studios in Atlanta; Wendy Raquel Robinson’s Amazing Grace Conservatory in Los Angeles; and Fire House Loft in New Orleans. It closes in Miami during Art Basel.
Spades: The Play Tour Dates
September 9-20: Washington, D.C. (Culture House DC)
September 23-October 18: Los Angeles, California (Amazing Grace Conservatory)
October 21-November 15: Atlanta, Georgia (Cam Kirk Studios)
November 18-29: New Orleans, Louisiana (Fire House Loft)
December 2-6: Miami, Florida
Tickets are available exclusively through Posh.
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Myles Bullock Be is ready for some peepin’ and some creepin’ as he has nabbed the role of Dr. Dre in Snoop, Universal Pictures’ biopic of entertainment mogul and music icon Snoop Dogg.
Craig Brewer is directing the feature, which is being produced by Imagine Entertainment’s Brian Grazer, the veteran producer behind the semi-autobiographical Eminem drama 8 Mile, and the company’s Allan Mandelbaum. Snoop Dogg and Death Row Pictures president Sara Ramaker are also producing.
Jonathan Daviss, one of the stars of Netflix series Outer Banks, is portraying Snoop Dogg, who emerged from Long Beach, Calif. in the 1990s to become one of the biggest names in rap.
Key to his success was his relationship with Dre, one of the members of influential gangsta rap group N.W.A. In the early 1990s, as Dre made his seminal solo album The Chronic, he was given given a cassette of demo tracks featuring a young Snoop Dogg. He was impressed that he put Snoop Dogg on numerous tracks, including the mega-successful single ‘Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang.’
Dre became Snoop Dogg’s mentor and produced the latter’s debut album, Doggystyle, which is considered one of the key albums of 1990s.
Brewer, who recently directed Song Sung Blue for Universal’s specialty studio Focus Features, wrote the latest draft of the script, which was initially written by Joe Robert Cole. The feature will incorporate music from Snoop Doog’s vast catalogue.
Universal, which previously made 2015’s Oscar-nominated N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton, will release Snoop on Aug. 6, 2027.
Imagine’s Jeb Brody is executive producing. Senior vp of production development Ryan Jones and director of development Tony Ducret are overseeing the project for the studio.
For Bullock Be, Snoop reunites the actor with Brewer, who directed him in the 2024 Peacock mini-series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, which had the actor part of an all-star cast that included Kevin Hart, Taraji P. Henson, and Samuel L. Jackson.
The actor appeared in 20th Century’s White Men Can’t Jump and a did a stint on Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s hit Starz series BMF, and earlier on starred in Marvel series Runaways.
Bullock Be, repped by Independent Artist Group and Liberman-Zerman Management, is currently shooting Hulu’s Prison Break reboot Prison Break: Black Creek as a series lead.
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Deadpool is proving to be surprisingly magnanimous as the flippant character loses a box office record to The Odyssey.
Universal Pictures confirmed Thursday that Christopher Nolan‘s mythological epic has collected $1.352 billion globally to become the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. The sum surpasses the $1.338 billion that Disney’s Deadpool & Wolverine collected after hitting theaters in July 2024.
Starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway and Robert Pattinson, The Odyssey has had a historic run at the box office since its July 17 release, with its domestic cume now standing at $516.3 million. Earlier this month, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the film had surpassed Nolan’s 2012 movie The Dark Knight Rises to become the acclaimed filmmaker’s highest-grossing movie ever globally.
Ryan Reynolds, known for playing the mouthy mercenary in the Deadpool franchise, took to social media to congratulate The Odyssey and pass the torch. His post included clips from Deadpool & Wolverine, in which Reynolds’ Deadpool coincidentally battles Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine in a Honda Odyssey minivan.
“Congratulations to the entire cast and crew of The Odyssey for becoming the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time,” Reynolds wrote. “That is one helluva car.”
More to come.
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