HBO Max Lands Michael B Jordan's Production With Tika Sumpter

HBO Max has won an auction for The Ancestor which is supposed to be a psychological thriller and will be penned by Kay Oyegun that will be developed as a star vehicle for Tika Sumter, produced by Michael B. Jordan and Alana Mayo’s Outlier Society.

Several suitors were in the mix for the spec which Oyegun wrote from a story she hatched with Sumpter, who’ll play an African American female med student who finds herself in a timely psychological thriller premise in the tradition of Get Out. Sumter has co-starred in the Ride Along films and played the future First Lady Michelle Robinson Obama in Southside With You.

Oyegun is the This Is Us writer/producer who just made an overall deal at 20th Century Fox Television who wrote the Angela Davis movie at Lionsgate, BPI at Warner Bros and has the comedy Assisted Living and an adaptation of the Angie Thomas book The Come Up at Paramount, and the Tomi Adeyemi novel adaptation of Children of Blood and Bone at 20th Century Studios.

Pic will be produced Mayo, Jordan and Khaliah Neal of Outlier Society as well as Oyegun and Sumpter. Emily Gerson Saines will be exec producer.