Tyler Perry to Adapt 'Colored' Play into Film

Tyler Perry will adapt the 1975 play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" for a feature to be released by Lionsgate.

Perry will write, direct and produce, with "Colored" being the first project for his new production shingle, 34th Street Pictures, which has a deal with Lionsgate. It will also be his first film not based on his own work.

Paul Hall is also producing the picture.

The play, by Ntozake Shange, is structured as a series of poems that deal, via the female perspective, with issues such as love, abandonment, rape and abortion. It was previously adapted into a 1982 TV movie.

Perry aims to gather an all-star cast of female actors, with a shooting start date of early November in Atlanta. Lionsgate will release the movie in 2010.

The prolific Perry, repped by WME, has his latest, "Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself," opening Sept. 11, with "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too?" releasing April 2, 2010.

"Colored" will be his 10th project under this deal with Lionsgate.

– Nielsen Business Media