Cheo Hodari Coker & Producers James Lassiter, Jay-Z & Aaron Kaplan Working On ‘Forty Acres’ Thriller For Netflix

Deadline is reporting that Netflix is in early development on the feature adaptation of the Simon & Schuster Dwayne Alexander Smith novel Forty Acres which Luke Cage creator Cheo Hodari Coker will write and produce.

Forty Acres follows a Civil Rights attorney must fight for survival when he’s invited to join an elite black organization with a mind-blowing secret; the thriller is described as being a cross between The Firm and Get Out. 

Coker will produce alongside James Lassiter, Jay-Z and Kapital Entertainment’s Aaron Kaplan. Jay-Z and Lassiter recently produced the all-Black western movie The Harder They Fall for the streamer. Executive producers on Forty Acres are Dana Honor for Kapital, Smith, Niles Kirchner, Bill Strauss and Mike Epps.

Coker is currently in a multi-year television overall deal at Amazon. He was the creator, showrunner and EP of Netflix/Marvel’s Luke Cage. He won an NAACP Image Award for Best Writing in A Dramatic Series for his work on TNT’s Southland. On the feature side, he’s currently writing Diary of a Trap God, based on the Gucci Mane autobiography for Paramount/Imagine, as well as the sequel to the 2005 feature Four Brothers for Paramount. His other feature credits include Creed II, Lowriders and Notorious plus uncredited work on Straight Outta Compton and All Eyez on Me. Coker is a former journalist for Vibe, Spin, Rolling Stone and the LA Times, and was the last person to interview Notorious B.I.G. before he was murdered.