It’s Pride Month—and writer George M. Johnson has something additional to be proud of!
According to Deadline, Gabrielle Union’s I’ll Have Another Productions has optioned Johnson’s memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue for series development at Sony Pictures TV, where Union has a first-look deal.
Deadline breaks down the book synopsis:
The title of the memoir is a play on gender reveals and the heteronormative association of the color blue for boys and pink for girls. It is also a nod to Johnson’s dad who was a cop and growing up in a “blue” household, beliefs surrounding queerness and blackness weren’t necessarily in line with one another. Blue also signifies a nod to the Oscar-winning film Moonlight which was extremely influential to Johnson’s personal life. He wanted to acknowledge the beauty of black boys looking blue in the moonlight.
Johnson tweeted the great news on Wednesday writing, “I’m developing a TV series based on my book, All Boys Aren’t Blue. Thank you Gabrielle Union.”
Johnson had tweeted a bit of a teaser on Monday, noting, “It’s so hard sitting on good news, but SOON you will see what I’m working on.”
Oop, now we know! How exciting! Union was, of course, pretty damn excited herself, tweeting, “Soooooo excited!! Lets gooooooo!!”
“I always say that visibility and representation [are] a starting point. What happens after you see us? What black queer kids need is they need support; they need policies that speak to them, policies that matter to them,” Johnson told The Root in a June 2019 interview.
Speaking of support, a Johnson-Union partnership makes even more sense as Union (and husband Dwyane Wade) have been public role models in what it means for parents to fully see and support their children, as we’ve all witnessed in regard to their transgender child Zaya.
“Getting to work on this adaptation alongside LGBTQ+ ally and activist Gabrielle Union and her production company makes me incredibly excited,” Johnson said in a statement. “She’s someone who is not only a champion in the fight for supporting marginalized communities of color but the work she’s doing as a storyteller and producer is lifting every voice who hasn’t had the opportunity to be heard.”
“Queer black existence has been here forever yet rarely has that experience been shown in literature or film and television,” Union said in a statement. “Being a parent to a queer-identifying daughter has given me the platform to make sure that these stories are being told in a truthful and authentic way and George’s memoir gives you the blueprint for that and more. What I love about this book is that it not only offers a space for queer kids of color to be seen and heard but it also offers those who see themselves outside of that standpoint to be held accountable and help them better understand what it takes to truly have acceptance with someone who is considered other.”
“The whole reasoning of the book was to allow parents to understand your child has a whole world going on outside of you, and it will behoove you to invest in that world with your child,” Johnson recently told The Root, which featured an excerpt from the book this past April. “You can’t see the thoughts that your child is processing, and I wanted parents, and guardians, and teachers, and whoever read this book to understand this is just not about some salacious tale about my first time having sex, and molestation and sexual assault; these are real-life things that are going to happen to our children because they are happening every day to our children. To deny them the opportunity to read about it is just a disservice to them because then they don’t know how to navigate it when it occurs to them.”
To prep for the TV adaptation, make sure you purchase a copy of All Boys Aren’t Blue where books are sold.