Colman Domingo Co-Producing the Broadway Production of “Fat Ham”

Colman Domingo is hamming it up…

The 53-year-old Belizean-Guatemalan American actor and social justice activist, an Emmy winner and Tony Award, has signed on as co-producer of the upcoming Broadway production of James IjamesPultizer Prize winning play Fat Ham.

Colman DomingoBeginning performances on Tuesday, March 21, the production of Fat Ham at American Airlines Theatre  has an official opening night of Wednesday, April 12 for a strictly limited 14-week engagement through Sunday, June 25.

The play, which has been described as a “comic tragedy,” reinvents Shakespeare’s Hamlet by setting it at a backyard cookout where Juicy, a queer, Black Southern college kid grappling with questions of identity, is met by the ghost of his father who shows up demanding that Juicy avenge his murder, even as Juicy is trying to break the cycles of trauma and violence in service of his own liberation.

Fat Ham on Broadway is a Public Theater and National Black Theatre co-production.

“I am beyond thrilled to be a co-producer on The National Black Theater and Public Theater transfer of James Ijames thrilling Fat Ham directed by my dear friend and visionary director Saheem Ali,” Domingo said in a statement to Deadline. “This is the kind of theater that we need on Broadway – bold reimaginings of stories that fuel us all.”

The Broadway transfer of Fat Ham from the Off Broadway Public Theatre represents National Black Theatre’s first production on Broadway, and only the third play to be transferred by a Black theater in Broadway’s century-long history. The complete Off Broadway cast will make the move to Broadway.

Domingo currently stars in Fear of the Walking Dead and Euphoria, and has completed filming of The Color Purple. He is a 2011 Tony Award nominee for his performance in The Scottsboro Boys musical.

Gloria Calderón Kellett Developing “With Love” as First Series Under Overall Production Deal with Amazon Studios

Gloria Calderón Kellett is bringing the Love to Amazon…

The 46-year-old Cuban American television writer/creator’s GloNation Studios and Amazon Studios have set With Love as the first series under Calderón Kellett’s overall deal with the streamer.

Gloria Calderón Kellett

The one-hour romantic dramedy, created and written by the One Day At a Time co-creator, had been fast tracked since the pitch stage with the goal to launch it during the 2021 holiday season.

Additionally, Calderón Kellett has set up three other series projects for development at Amazon Studios through GloNation as part of her deal. The wide-ranging slate includes Shakespeare-themed high-school drama Verona, co-created by Calderón Kellett; Glowing Up, a half-hour adult animation musical series based on the graphic novel Mismatched, a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma; and Dating the Lopez Ladies, a half-hour animated comedy created by Calderón Kellett.

Glowing Up and Dating the Lopez Ladies follow Calderón Kellett’s foray into animation with the well-received special episode of One Day At a Time, which was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Meanwhile, With Love and Verona mark a return to the hour-long side for Calderón Kellett, who previously worked on Devious Maids and iZombie.

With Love follows the Diaz siblings, Lily and Jorge, who are on a mission to find love and purpose. The Diaz siblings cross paths with seemingly unrelated residents during some of the most heightened days of the year –the holidays.

“I started writing as a way to create characters and stories that represented myself and the community I love,” Calderón Kellett said. “After such a heavy year, there was nothing I wanted more than to see a happy, warm, loving family that looked like mine, celebrating trauma-free and falling in love. So, to be bringing that family to life as my first project with Amazon Studios feels especially personal and is incredibly exciting. I cannot wait to share With Love this holiday season!”

The holiday series is currently in prep, with production set to begin in June. Its pilot episode will be directed and executive produced by Meera Menon.

With Love is a special project and Gloria at her best, creating a world with a vibrant family at its center, hysterical circumstances, and so much heart and soul. We’re so proud of what’s to come of this series and can’t wait for the world to fall in love with it,” said Marc Resteghini, US and Global Head of Development for Amazon Studios.

Here are details about the three other projects from Calderón Kellett’s GloNation Studios in the works at Amazon:

VERONA
As Shakespeare so famously wrote, all the world’s a stage… and never is that truer than as a teenager, when you are performing for yourself, your peers, your parents, and social media. Verona is an hour-long drama series which takes the classic Shakespearean stories you know and love out of the renaissance and into present-day high school. The highs are still high, the lows are still low, but one thing is certain… high school drama is about to get a lot more poetic. We follow the Del Castillo sisters Nico, Delilah, and Inez as they play out familiar stories interweaved together in fair Verona where we lay our scene.
Created By: Roja Gashtili & Julia Lerman, Kelly Younger and Gloria Calderón Kellett.
Writers / Executive Producers: Roja Gashtili, Julia Lerman

GLOWING UP
Based on the graphic novel Mismatched (a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma), Glowing Up is a half-hour adult animation musical series centered on Evan Horowitz, an out and proud Latino/Jew amateur matchmaker and wannabe makeup influencer. Evan is an old-school romantic who dedicates himself to getting true love to trend at his high school in Queens — through singing, dancing, and contoured cheekbones. A big gay musical comedy that focuses on love and celebrates LGBTQIA+ youth.
Writers / Executive Producers: Debby Wolfe & Marcos Luevanos
EPs: Gloria Calderón Kellett and Will Graham (for Field Trip)

DATING THE LOPEZ LADIES
A half-hour animated comedy series following plus-sized powerhouse Ilana Lopez. She’s a 25-year-old artist who runs a wildly successful comic strip about dating called Sharp Curves following the misadventures of her alter-ego Gabby. Gabby becomes all too real and is the devil on Ilana’s shoulder in life as well as on the page. When Ilana’s mother, the 49-year-old glamorous divorcee, Sofia visits, she points out that fictional Gabby has more fun than real-life Ilana. It makes Ilana and her friends energized to start a date club and take their romantic conquests seriously. Inspired by the young people, Sofia decides to join her daughter and friends in date club! Adventures and hilarity ensue.
Creator/Writer/EP: Gloria Calderón Kellett

Calderón Kellett, a leading voice in Latinx storytelling on television, was executive producer/co-showrunner, director and actress on Netflix/Pop’s One Day At A Time, which was universally praised for its authentic and nuanced portrayal of the the Latinx experience.

She began her TV writing career as a staff writer on the CBS comedy series How I Met Your Mother, rising to co-producer and earning an ALMA Award for one of her scripts in 2008. She then worked as a writer-producer on such series as CBS/Sony Television’s Rules of Engagement, Lifetime’s Devious Maids and the CW’s iZombie before taking on One Day at a Time. 

Cinema Guild Acquires North American Rights to Matías Piñeiro’s “Isabella”

Matías Piñeiro’s latest project will be headed to theaters in North America.

Cinema Guild has acquired North American distribution rights to the 38-year-old filmmaker’s Isabella, which won a special jury mention in the Encounters section at the 70th Berlinale earlier this year.

Matías Piñeiro

Cinema Guild is planning a 2021 theatrical release for the film.

Isabella follows Mariel (María Villar) who wants to play the role of Isabella in a local theater troupe’s production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, but money problems prevent her from preparing for the audition. She thinks of asking her brother for financial help, but is worried about being too direct. Her solution is to ask her brother’s girlfriend, Luciana (Agustina Muñoz), also an actress and a more self-assured one, to convince her brother to give her the money. Luciana agrees on the condition that Mariel will not abandon her acting and continue to prepare for the part of Isabella.

Isabella

“We can’t wait for audiences to be enchanted by Matías’ latest,” said Cinema Guild president Peter Kelly. “Isabella is a film of wonders that reveals more with each viewing.”