Janicza Bravo will direct film based on viral Zola Twitter story
Folks have been waiting for this one for a while.
A black woman’s wild Twitter tale about two strippers, a bi-polar boyfriend and a crazy pimp will be turned into a movie, reports Shadow and Act. Janicza Bravo will direct the film Zola Tells All: The Real Story Behind the Greatest Stripper Saga Ever Tweeted, a story first posted by Aziah “Zola” Wells on Twitter, chronicling her wild adventure to Florida filled with sex, suspense, sugar daddies, violence, strippers, kidnapping and naughty night light life.
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The Twitter rant was so ridiculous and funny that it caught the eye of several Hollywood heavy hitters like director Ava Du Vernay and Missy Elliott. The story is in good hands with Bravo who made her directorial debut Lemon and earned respect from industry execs who called it a “masterfully executed comedy-drama.”
Bravo is also behind the Juneteenth episode of Atlanta and “Chapter IX” (the road trip episode) of Season 2 of Dear White People.
In 2015, David Kushner, wrote a Rolling Stone article based on Wells’ sensational tweets. The script will be based off of that article and peened byAndrew Neel and Mike Roberts.
Replete with “colorful” language, Zola’s tale of a strippers’ trip to Florida gone horribly bad is the stuff of Internet legend.
In about 150 tweets, Zola takes readers from her first interaction with a woman named Jess at a Detroit area Hooters to their trip to Florida together, which turns out to be a couple days from hell thanks to a gun-toting pimp, Zola becoming an impromptu madam, a man prone to punching himself and a brief if not terrifying kidnapping situation.
#TheStory shocked the Internet with “her harrowing road trip to Florida with said ‘white b***h,’ Jessica; Jessica’s maudlin boyfriend, Jarrett; and Jessica’s violent Nigerian pimp, ‘Z.’ Tricks get turned, a hustler gets murdered, Jarrett leaps from a four-story window,” Kushner writes. “It reads like Spring Breakers meets Pulp Fiction, as told by Nicki Minaj.”
The story itself may have had a few disparities, but it did lead to a very real takedown of a sex trafficking scheme which led to the arrest of the Nigerian pimp, ‘Z.’
James Franco, Andrew Neel and Killer Films will produce. There is some controversy over Franco still being involved with the film since he has been accused of sexual assault, but we’ll see how this plays out.
