News dropped today from Hollywood circles that actresses Gabrielle Union and Eva Longoria are developing an LGBTQ wedding comedy feature for Amazon Studios. They’ll not only produce the film but likely star as dueling soon-to-be mothers-in-law whose sons are getting married.
“Eva and I try to take over their wedding [planning] and make it the wedding of our dreams versus theirs,” Union said on Nov. 13 at a tastemaker screening of “The Inspection.” The untitled project is being written by Ricardo Gamboa and produced by Macro Film Studios, Union’s I’ll Have Another Productions, and Longoria’s UnbeliEVAble Entertainment.
Union also gave an update on “Got to Be,” a Billy Porter-directed road trip movie she’s producing about three Rhode Island high schoolers who travel to New York City for their first Pride parade. It was inspired by Union and husband Dwyane Wade’s daughter Zaya asking to attend Miami Pride when she was 10 years old. “It’s a group of diverse kids. One is a chubby Asian, another is a Black nonbinary — I don’t want to say a diva or divo, but an extravagant, dynamic larger personality — and then there’s a white bisexual boy,” Union says, adding that she hopes the film features authentic casting. “I believe that it is important to have real representation so we’re not play-acting at what it is to be queer,” she says.
Union was also on hand at the premiere of “Strange World,” Disney’s new animated family adventure film, on Tuesday in Hollywood. She and Jake Gyllenhaal star as the parents of a gay teen (Jaboukie Young-White). “A lot of folks are trying to erase whole chunks of our population and trying to reimagine reality without LGBTQIA folks,” Union said. “The reality is, we exist everywhere, every part of the globe.”
Young-White said of his character’s queerness, “It’s beautiful… It’s not self-congratulatory, it’s not announcing itself, it’s just accepting it as a normal reflection of our reality.”
