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Lionsgate label Codeblack Films is partnering with Sanaa Lathan to executive produce and star in a film based on Omar Tyree's bestselling book trilogy Flyy Girl, which it acquired in July 2013 with Dear White People producer Effie Brown aboard. Now Lathan will star as Flyy Girl protagonist Tracy Ellison, a beautiful, intelligent, and somewhat sassy goal-driven woman. Lionsgate said Precious scribe Geoffrey Fletcher will rewrite Nicole Jefferson-Asher's script.

Flyy Girl

The Flyy Girl books are a coming-of-age story that explores the journey of a woman motivated by the material life who plunges into a fast-paced world of gratuitous sex, violence and heartbreak in an attempt to find herself and to assess her goals in life during the hip-hop era. In the midst of her journey, she is forced to reinvent herself and rethink her relationships, her career and definition of success. The novel series has grossed more than $30 million for publisher Simon & Schuster since the first book was published in 2001.

Lathan, who starred in Codeblack's 2014 suspense thriller Repentance alongside Forest Whitaker and Anthony Mackie, is next up in Now You See Me 2 at Lionsgate and Universal's sequel The Best Man Wedding.

Aidan Turner, star of the hit BBC period drama Poldark, has been cast in Locomotive Media's dark comedy Look Away. He joins previously announced cast Matthew Broderick, Chloë Sevigny, and Shannon Tarbet. Turner will play Russell in the film, the love interest to Tarbet's main character, an offbeat young woman who is unable to physically see her mother due to a fictional affliction called selective blindness. Production began on June 8 in New York's Hudson Valley.

Turner's feature credits include the Hobbit trilogy and Jim Sheridan's upcoming The Secret Scripture and animated pic Loving Vincent. Poldark was a ratings winner for BBC One this spring and begins airing on PBS' Masterpiece on June 21.

Turner is repped by WME, Lisa Richards Agency, Creative Artists Management and Hansen, Jacobson.