A Raisin in the Sun, With Combs and Stage Co-Stars, Hits the Small Screen

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is coming to the small screen with Sean Combs, Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald and Sanaa Lathan, all of whom starred in the 2004 Broadway revival, reprising their roles for television. The play is expected to air on ABC in late 2007, according to Variety.

A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of three generations of a family living and struggling together under one roof. The Youngers—Mama Rashad, her children Beneatha Lathan and Walter Lee Combs, and his wife Ruth McDonald and their son Travis—live on Chicago's South Side in the 1950s. It is a place in which dreams, like the raisin in the Langston Hughes' poem from which the play takes its title, wither and die if nothing is done with them.

The drama was made into a lauded 1961 film with a script by Hansberry. It was previously produced for television in 1989.

With this cast, the show had a limited engagement at Broadway's Royale Theatre from March 30, 2004, through July 11, 2004. The stage production, directed by Kenny Leon, received mixed reviews, but was a big hit at the box office. Rashad and McDonald won Tony Awards for their performances.

Leon will direct the small-screen adaptation, which is set to feature a screenplay, based on Hansberry's original text, by Paris Qualles. The picture will be executive produced by Sony Pictures TV-based producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron aka Storyline Entertainment, Combs' Bad Boy World Wide Entertainment Group and Broadway producers Carl Rumbaugh, Susan Batson and David Binder. Filming is expected to begin in December in Toronto.