Laurence Fishburne & Larenz Tate Team For Audio Drama About Numbers Game

by Denise Petski

Hoping to build on the success of podcasts such as pop culture phenom Serial, Laurence Fishburne’s Cinema Gypsy Productions and Larenz Tate’s TateMen Entertainment are partnering to produce Policy Kings, the first scripted audio series from digital audio ad sales company AudioHQ.

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Originally conceived by TateMen Entertainment, Policy Kings is a 10-episode audio drama written by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Josh Olson (A History of Violence). The series, which will launch in fall 2016, chronicles the lives of the players in Chicago’s “policy” numbers games of the 1940s and illuminates the self-sustaining African American community of Bronzeville. The numbers game or policy racket was an illegal lottery played mostly in poor neighborhoods. It swept Chicago’s black community in the 1940s and was eventually taken over by the mafia. Kc Wayland’s Wayland Productions (audio series We’re Alive) will handle physical production.

Cinema Gypsy, which Fishburne runs with longtime manager and producing partner Helen Sugland, is producing ABC’s hit comedy series black-ish and the upcoming six-hour Nelson Mandela miniseries Madiba for BET Networks.

TateMen Entertainment, toplined by partners Larenz, Lahmard and LaRon Tate, most recently produced the indie Beta Test, currently in post‐production, and wrapped principal photography on the feature Deuces, alongside Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Productions.

Fishburne, Tate, TateMen Entertainment, Cinema Gypsy Productions, Olson and AudioHQ are repped by Paradigm, which brokered the deal alongside attorneys Nina Shaw and Jeff Finkelstein (Cinema Gypsy Productions) and John Meigs, Jr. (TateMen Entertainment).