After lengthy negotiations, NBC has closed a deal for Jamie Foxx’s drama project Tommy’s Little Girl based on the trailer Foxx shot with Selma Blair, Paul Sorvino, Tony Sirico and James Russo. The network also has picked up Life Is Good, a comedy from Unhitched creators Chris Pappas and Mike Bernier and Hangover 2 writer Scot Armstrong. Based on Foxx’s idea, Girl is described as Le Femme Nikita meets The Sopranos and centers on a young girl (Blair) raised in a mafia family who is hidden away in an orphanage after her family is murdered by a competing mafia crime boss. She grows up to become an attorney by day, and a deadly, well trained killer by night, as she avenges her family’s murder and attempts to locate her last living relative. Jorge Zamacona has been tapped to write the script and executive produce. Also executive producing are Foxx and Deon Taylor through their recently launched No Brainer Films. Foxx took an entrepreneurial approach with the project, shooting a trailer for it over the summer that was then taken to the networks.
The key actors in the trailer — Blair, Sorvino and Sirico — are still attached though there are no deals in place with NBC. Foxx and Taylor co-wrote and co-directed the trailer, which was financed by a private investor. Girl will now be produced by UMS. In addition to Girl, Foxx is also executive producing a midseason sketch comedy series for Fox. Foxx and Zamacona are with CAA.
Life, also from UMS, centers on Andy, husband and father of two young girls, whose mellow suburban family world is thrown into chaos when he is found by Dru, the 19-year-old mixed race son he never knew he had. Andy is over the moon to learn that he has a son and that enthusiasm is more than Dru can handle. Pappas and Bernier, repped by CAA and Epidemic, will write the project and will executive produce it with Armstrong, who has a first-look deal with NBC, and Ravi Nandan, an executive at Armstrong’s American Work production company.
