Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk, The Boondocks, Seven Seconds) will executive produce Slay, new horror-themed drama being developed for The CW, as reported by Variety. King’s younger sister Reina will join her in producing the series for Royal Ties Productions, a company they founded together.
Slay will reportedly follow the exploits of a Black teenage girl growing up in Virginia who has to use her inherited supernatural abilities to protect her community from the forces of evil, Variety reports. Virginia has reputation as an alleged hotbed of spectral energy; the state’s oldest ghost tour has been a staple of its tourism industry for over a quarter of a century.
The show hits close to home for its writer and co-executive producer, Julian Johnson (Monsters and Mysteries in America, Prodigal Son), who was born and raised in Norfolk. In 2017, she wrote, co-produced and acted in the short film Crawford Road, named for Virginia location infamous for its alleged haunted legacy.
Regina King, meanwhile, recently cinched her fourth Emmy for her role as Detective Angela Abar in HBO’s Watchmen. She was also named as one of Glamour‘s Women of the Year. Her feature-length directorial debut, the historical drama One Night in Miami, is scheduled to open in select theaters on Christmas Day prior to its arrival on Amazon Prime on January 15th, 2021, Variety reports. The film made history this year when it became the first fiction film directed by Black American woman selected for inclusion in the Venice Film Festival, according to The Guardian.