Spike Lee is preparing to shop around a new TV series titled Archer, with tech entrepreneur and rising star Chad Sanders, Variety has exclusively learned.
The show follows the life of a “20-something African-American coding genius and iconoclast living in Brooklyn.” He has created a dating app that reads people’s sexual chemistry. The show is supposed to be a dark comedy and sociological thriller, writes Variety, and the main character is described as a “young, black Mark Zuckerberg-like protagonist.”
The story goes between several cities: New York, Silicon Valley and Berlin.
Variety reports that the show is loosely based on Sanders’ life. He spent the first four years of his career at Google and served as partner and head of business development at Dev Bootcamp, which is a coding school. It was eventually sold to Kaplan for double-digit millions. Most recently, he founded Archer Genius Management, a business development agency, which is where the title of the new TV series comes from.
Sanders is the executive producer, writer and director of the series, as well as the creator and the lead character. Lee is directing the pilot episode and will executive produce through his 40 Acres and A Mule Filmworks production banner, reports Variety. Sanders and Lee met through a mutual friend, though they also both graduated from Morehouse College.
There is no network signed on to the series yet, and no particular platform is being “eyed at this point” according to Variety.
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