Lionsgate has acquired worldwide film rights to Ntozake Shange's 1975 stage play and Nzingha Stewart's adapted screenplay of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf.

The play was first performed in California at the Bacchanal women's
bar near Berkeley and first produced in 1975 at New York's Studio
Riobea. A year later it went on to play Off-Broadway the following
year and finally made it to Broadway later that same year at the Booth
Theatre.

Shange's play explores the female black perspective through 20 poems
performed by a cast of nameless women each referred to solely by a
colour.

President of motion picture production Mike Paseornek called For
Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf 'a milestone in modern American theatre' that resonated 'as powerfully
today as it did when it was first performed in New York.'

Lionsgate's executive vice president of business and legal affairs
Robert Melnik negotiated the deal with Lisa Davis of Frankfurt,
Kurnit, Klein & Selz PC on behalf of Shange, Ryan Nord of Hirsch,
Wallerstein, Hayum, Matloff and Fishman, and Charles King of The
William Morris Agency on behalf of Stewart.

Stewart is represented by Neda Niroumand and Vince Cirrincione of
Vincent Cirrincione Associates.

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