Caffeinated Clint
IM Global and producers Bob Teitel, Tika Sumpter and Richard Tanne announced that they have cast Parker Sawyers as the young Barack Obama in “Southside With You” the romantic dramedy inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama’s first date. Sawyer joins Tika Sumpter (”Get on Up”) who will play Michelle.
The film covers the eventful date in 1989 when a young associate named Barack Obama was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson on a summer afternoon and evening, that took them from the Art Institute of Chicago to a screening of Spike Lee’s DO THE RIGHT THING to the site of their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.
Sawyers, an American actor based in the UK, recently completed Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” with Joseph Gordon Levitt and is about to shoot a supporting role in the feature “The Autopsy of Jane Done”, opposite Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch. Other credits include the upcoming Universal action drama “Spectral” as well as James McTeigue’s thriller SURVIVOR opposite Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson; the dark thriller “Don’t Hang Up” opposite Sienna Guillory and the sci-Fi thriller “Monsters : Dark Continent”. He also had supporting roles in “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Hyde Park on the Hudson”.
Richard Tanne makes his directorial debut with the project based on his screenplay, which will be produced by Bob Teitel, with IM Global’s Founder and CEO Stuart Ford, President of Production Matt Jackson, SVP of Production Glendon Palmer and Tracy Bing on board as executive producers. The film was cast by Tracy “Twinkie” Byrd (”Fruitvale Station”, ”When the Bough Breaks”, ”Jumping The Broom”).
