Oprah Winfrey makes her second News appearance this morning with the story that her Harpo Films production company has joined forces with Lionsgate and picked up the rights to Will You Be My Black Friend? as a star vehicle for Chris Rock.
Representing part of a mini-trend of films based on magazine articles (along with Darren Aronofsky's Heist), **Black Friend **stems from a GQ story by Devin Friedman about his dorky attempts to add some colour to his (entirely white) peer group. The main thrust was obviously humorous, but there was a serious point to it about the difficulty of stepping outside your own social demographic once you reach a certain point in your life.
This obviously has the potential to be horribly crass, so it'll need to tread carefully. But the idea of a kind of reverse Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is fun, and the presence of Rock and the involvement of Lionsgate practically guarantee some pleasingly sharp edges.
No director or screenwriters have been announced yet. More news as we get it.