Issa Rae, Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw & Universal Land Story Rights For Female-Focused Movie 'Sinkhole'

Rae, Peele and Universal acquired the rights to a short story penned by writer Leyna Krow in a seven-figure deal.

Eight Emmy nominations for Insecure wasn’t enough news to get the week started for Issa Rae. Today, Rae and Oscar winner Jordan Peele have announced they'll be teaming up on Sinkhole, a female identity genre movie. 

The film is set to explore questions of female perception and identity. In a seven-figure-deal Universal beat out 10 other studio bidders, talent and filmmaker packages for rights to Leyna Krow’s short story. Deadline broke the exclusive news.

A synopsis of the story divulges that the story centers around “a young family that moves into their dream home despite a large sinkhole in the backyard.” If that’s not strange, it gets stranger, the sinkhole apparently fixes broken and destroyed items. The looming question that might drive the film: what if the thing fixing everything is a person?

The project is being developed as Rae’s newest project. Just yesterday, she was nominated for eight Emmys. Rae will produce with Universal and Peele’s Monkeypaw. Win Rosenfeld will produce under Monkeypaw, while Rae, Montreal McKay, and Sara Rastogi will produce under Issa Rae Productions.

Krow, a writer, is originally from Spokane, WA. Her short story is derived from the street she lives on. She was inclined to write the piece when a group of local writers was tasked with penning short fairytales on the theme “I Married A Monster.” Her inclinations led her to explore “the notion of female perception.”

Krow also was interested in unpacking “the ways society and cultures can promote the concept of women as imperfect or broken.” Her short story has elements of psychological sci-fi in addition to horror. Lurking beneath is the subplot that expands on the human condition through the female lens. She will executive produce with Alex Davis-Lawrence co-founder of the literary journal Moss, the story was originally published in the journal. 

At the moment there's no shoot date.