Deadline is reporting that the CW has put into development an hour-long drama series based on the 1989 film Lean on Me which will feature a female-led cast. The show will be executive produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter through SpringHill Entertainment, as well as John Legend.
The series will tell the story of Amarie Baldwin, a young spirited black teacher who becomes the principal of a public high school in Akron, Ohio, and must overcome the obstacles that arrive as she tries to turn around the institution in the face of a broken system. The show will be loosely based on the movie starring Morgan Freeman, who played the role of Joe Louis Clark, a real-life inner-city high school principal in Paterson, New Jersey. Clark was tasked with getting his students to improve their test scores in the New Jersey Minimum Basic Skills Test, or run the risk of having the school taken over by the state government.
Even though James could have spent this offseason getting himself acclimated to living full-time in Los Angeles after signing a four-year deal with the Lakers, he has helped kick his production company into high gear, aligning themselves with a number of projects, including the comedy series Brotherly Love inspired by the life of Philadelphia 76ers star Ben Simmons, and the Showtime docu-series Shut Up and Dribble.
What makes this latest announcement so intriguing is that this CW show is one of the few SpringHill Entertainment-produced projects that aren’t closely associated with sports. Also, the fact that this project with be female-led is fantastic as well.
