Venus & Serena Williams Team With ‘Tár’s Alexandra Milchan To Develop ‘En Garde’; ‘Antebellum’s Bush Renz To Helm Adaptation Of Jewell Parker Rhodes Bestseller

EXCLUSIVE: Following the success of their Academy Award-winning Warner Bros drama King Richard, based on their own life stories, tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams have teamed with Oscar-nominated Tár producer Alexandra Milchan to develop En Garde, a new feature to be adapted for the screen and directed by the duo known as Bush Renz (Antebellum).

The forthcoming film is based on the New York Times bestselling book Black Brother, Black Brother by award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes, which was published by Little, Brown in 2020. It tells the story of two bi-racial brothers — one white-presenting; the other, Black — who must navigate the unforgiving social constructs and institutions of an elite Connecticut prep high school. When the darker-skinned brother’s future is threatened by his arch-nemesis, he seeks out the counsel of an Olympic fencing champion to beat him at his own game.

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Venus Williams will be joined as a producer by Serena Williams for 926 Productions, Milchan for Emjag Productions (Tár, Black Bird), Isha Price (King Richard) and Lara Shriftman, with Emjag’s Martin Salgo co-producing.

Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz are the filmmakers together known as Bush Renz who are best known for their feature directorial debut Antebellum, starring Janelle Monáe — a 2020 horror-thriller which they wrote, directed and produced for Lionsgate. The pair were named to Out100‘s list of the Most Influential LGBTQ+ People in America that same year.

The winner of seven Grand Slam singles titles and four Olympic gold medals, tennis champion Venus Williams is also an entrepreneur active across the fashion, design, wellness and entertainment industries. She served as an exec producer on King Richard, which detailed the influence her father and coach, Richard Williams, had on her and Serena’s childhood and career as they became tennis icons and changed the sport for generations to come. Other upcoming credits for Venus include the feature doc Copa ’71 about the 1971 Women’s World Cup of soccer, on which she’s an EP.

The winner of 23 career Grand Slams who is likewise active off-court in business, philanthropy and fashion, Serena Williams exec produced King Richard alongside her sister and recently became a published author with the release of her children’s book The Adventures of Qai Qai. She announced the launch of her multimedia production company 926 Productions, aiming to elevate female and diverse voices through content that speaks to all, earlier this month.

In addition to producing writer-director Todd Field’s acclaimed Focus Features drama Tár starring Cate Blanchett, which this year claimed six Academy Award nominations, Milchan recently exec produced Apple TV+’s celebrated crime drama Black Bird, starring Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser. Notable past credits include AMC’s The Terror, The Wolf of Wall Street, Starz’s docuseries Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, the Freida Pinto-led Netflix thriller Intrusion, David Ayer’s Street Kings, Alexandre Aja’s horror Mirror and the historical drama The 24th. Other upcoming projects for the producer include Apple TV+’s anticipated thriller series The Crowded Room, starring Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried, and David Fincher’s Netflix crime pic The Killer starring Michael Fassbender.

Bush Renz are represented by Dissident and Gang, Tyre, Ramer. Venus Williams is repped by Foster Garvey; Serena Williams by WME, Foster Garvey and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole; Milchan by Paul Hastings; and Rhodes by UTA and Michael Bourret of Dystel, Goderich and Bourret.

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