If Sony was hoping to keep all of the projects they’d been considering or had been pitched a secret, this leak has been an absolute nightmare for them. But according to the Daily Beast, Spike Lee’s insane idea for a sequel to School Daze (his second feature, released in 1988, after She’s Gotta Have It, before Do The Right Thing) is more than just a pitch, it’s an actual project with a finished script that Lee is actively trying to put together.
An email dated April 4, 2014, from Bart Walker, Spike Lee’s agent at ICM, to Doug Belgrad, President of SPE Motion Picture Group, details the revised script for Lee’s School Daze Too, a planned sequel to Lee’s 1988 film. It’s allegedly being packaged as a starring vehicle for rapper Drake and Kevin Hart.
“This is a new draft that Spike has written after meetings with Drake, who will play the lead role of PE*NIS, and Kevin Hart who will play DAT NIGGA JIGGA. [Emphasis ours. -Ed.] The budget is $ 9 million (net, after Georgia tax credits), not including historic costs, star salaries, creative producer fees,” the email read. “I believe in the film both as an entertainment — a college film — and as a provocative and exciting piece about the conflict of traditional values (education, college) and hip hop/star/celebrity culture. Why go to college to get a job to make money when you can make more money rapping, stripping, and creating salacious music videos even if they demean women?”
This sounds like a black twitter April Fool’s joke, but apparently it’s real. I mean, depending how you interpret “allegedly being packaged,” that is. Sort of leaves ambiguous the question of who’s packaging and who’s alleging. Sounds like Spike Lee and his agent are packaging?
In any case, School Daze is a movie I first encountered just flipping through the channels on cable one night, and it’s pretty fascinating as a window into this little-depicted world of black fraternities. HBO Real Sports touched on something similar not too long ago in a segment about band hazing at historically black universities. It’s an interesting world, I’d watch that movie. That said, School Daze is also a super weird, over-the-top musical, and Spike Lee’s provocations and attempts at skewering seem totally unfocused these days, and the idea of Drake playing a character named “PE*NIS” does not give me great hope that this would be any better. I sort of wish Spike Lee would just tell stories about these subcultures he knows that are near and dear to his heart instead of thinking he’s putting the system on trial in every scene.