Last month we learned Spike Lee was eyeing Kanye West, Samuel L. Jackson, Common, and Jeremy Piven for his next film, Chiraq, an Amazon Studios project dealing with the violence in Chicago. And the reaction to that was basically "Lee is going back to his roots....Lee is stirring up controversy just like with his best movies", and so forth. Well, the truth is that Lee never stopped stirring the pot, only the results haven't been so good. But Chiraq does sound like a higher quality production from Lee than we've seen in quite some time, and now Screen Daily offers a pretty significant update.
West, Jackson, Jennifer Hudson, and John Cusack are definitely on board the film, which is being described as a musical comedy about "a woman’s quest to end gang warfare in Chicago. " Lee's inspiration for the story is apparently the Greek comedy, Lysistrata, which was about a woman who tried to end the Pelopennesian War by having women withhold sex from men until peace was negotiated, but that only made things worse.
Apparently Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel isn't too pleased with Lee's choice of title as the word "Chiraq" has a negative connotation but that's unlikely to stop him from using it. The film is expected to hit the sales floor at Cannes, so hopefully we'll be learning even more soon, like if Piven and Common are still involved.
