HBO Max Lands Kay Oyegun Spec With Tika Sumpter Starring, Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society Producing

Mike Fleming Jr
·2 min read

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EXCLUSIVE: HBO Max has won a spec auction for The Ancestor, a psychological thriller script by Kay Oyegun that will be developed as a star vehicle for Tika Sumpter, produced by Michael B. Jordan and Alana Mayo’s Outlier Society. I’ve heard the deal was high six figures.

Several suitors were in the mix for the spec which Oyegun wrote from a story she hatched with Sumpter, who’ll play an African American female med student who finds herself in a timely psychological thriller premise in the tradition of Get Out. Sumpter has co-starred in the Ride Along films and played the future First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama in Southside With You. She most recently co-starred in Sonic The Hedgehog.

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Oyegun is the This Is Us writer/producer who just made an overall deal at 20th Century Fox Television who wrote the Angela Davis movie at Lionsgate, BPI at Warner Bros and has the comedy Assisted Living and an adaptation of the Angie Thomas book The Come Up at Paramount, and the Tomi Adeyemi novel adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone at 20th Century Studios.

Pic will be produced Mayo, Jordan and Khaliah Neal of Outlier Society as well as Oyegun and Sumpter. Emily Gerson Saines will be exec producer.

Sumpter is repped by WME, Brookside Artist Management and Hansen Jacobson. Oyegun is repped by Underground and attorney Allison Binder. Outlier Society is WME, and attorney Greg Slewett.

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