Gabrielle Union Options Anissa Gray’s Novel ‘The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls’ For Series Adaptation

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EXCLUSIVE: Gabrielle Union-founded I’ll Have Another Productions has picked up the rights to The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls, the debut novel from broadcast journalist Anissa Gray. The book is being developed into a series under I’ll Have Another’s first-look production deal with Sony Pictures Television.

Erika L. Johnson, a writer/producer who’s worked on shows like Queen Sugar, Shades Of Blue, and Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird, will pen the adaptation and serve as an executive producer.

Published in 2019, the story explores sisterhood, mothers and daughters, identity within a family, and how the relationships that form who you are, can also be the ones to swallow you whole. It’s about three sisters whose lives are thrown into chaos when the eldest sister and her husband are arrested for white-collar crimes in a small Michigan town. This incident will expose each sister’s deep-buried childhood trauma, forcing them to confront old wounds and find a way to forge ahead together.

Johnson and Gabrielle Union are re-teaming for this project after previously working together on the BET series, Being Mary Jane. “I’m thrilled we’re teaming up to tell a powerful story examining how traumas can be passed down through generations within the Black community,” said Johnson.

“One of my goals with starting my own production company was to be able to create work for people I know and respect said Union. “Erika is one of those creatives. Besides that fact that she’s beyond professional, she’s extraordinarily talented. We both really responded to a lot of the themes that this book uncovers mainly because they aren’t so openly discussed within black culture. We want to be able to open the door for those types of conversations to exist.”

The deal was negotiated by Lucy Stille Literary on behalf of Aevitas.

Union, who can currently be seen on season 2 of the Charter/Spectrum series L.A.’s Finest, is repped by CAA, Range Media, and attorney Patti Felker of Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson. Johnson is repped by Grandview and Hansen Jacobson.

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