Imani Lewis and Tanya Wright have signed on to star in Killa, a horror-drama marking the feature filmmaking debut of writer-director Laci Dent. Production is set to begin in August.
The film follows Asa Jones, a girl from Louisiana chasing a college basketball scholarship who begins to lose herself to a captivating force as her dreams start slipping away.
Lewis, best known for starring in Netflix’s teen vampire series First Kill, brings a multifaceted resume to the project. A Grammy-winning songwriter, she co-wrote the single Water by Tyla. Her film credits include Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, Radha Blank’s The Forty-Year-Old Version and Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature. She will next be seen in Pure, a queer coming-of-age feature from writer-director Natalie Jasmine Harris in which she stars alongside Laya DeLeon Hayes. Set in the world of Black cotillion culture in suburban Maryland, Pure follows Celeste, a 17-year-old slam poetry prodigy navigating cultural expectations and her evolving queer identity after being uprooted from her Bay Area home. The project has earned support from Film Independent Fast Track, The Gotham Week Project Market and the Outfest Screenwriting Lab, among others.
Wright is known for her work on Orange Is the New Black, True Blood and 24.
Dent, a New Orleans native and professor of screen arts at Pepperdine University, has had her screenwriting supported by The Black List, SFFILM, Women in Film Los Angeles and The Gotham Week Project Market. Her short film Into the Night screened at the Museum of Modern Art.
Killa is produced by Morgan Bentz and executive produced by Kareem Mortimer, Trevite Willis and Julia Chatwin of Best Yet Entertainment, alongside Ellen Schmitt and Maggie Flatley of Brickyard VFX Studio.