Amazon MGM Studios is developing Vineyard Haven, a romantic drama feature written by All American showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll, The Hollywood Reporter reports exclusively. Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and Michael McGrath will produce through Berlanti Schechter Films, with Okoro Carroll also serving as executive producer.
The film follows two teenagers who share a memorable summer together on Martha’s Vineyard, hoping to reunite in the years that follow but never quite managing to make it happen. Nearly a decade later, they’re given another chance when he returns to the Vineyard as an NBA star recovering from an injury, while she’s come back home to heal from a difficult marriage.
Okoro Carroll previously served as executive producer and showrunner of The CW’s All American, which aired its series finale last month after eight seasons, and created and ran its spinoff, All American: Homecoming, alongside work on NBC’s Found. She’s also held co-executive producer roles on The Resident and Rosewood, and currently holds an overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. Her track record building long-running, character-driven dramas centered on Black leads and relationships positions her as a natural fit for a romance built around reunion and reinvention rather than a simpler, more conventional love story.
The project also lands amid a broader wave of productions turning to Martha’s Vineyard as a setting. Hallmark’s Love on the Vineyard premieres November 21 starring Paula Patton and Derek Luke, Netflix recently filmed an eight-part adaptation of Judy Blume’s Forever… partly on the island, and Season 2 of Imperfect Women is shifting its production design directly to Martha’s Vineyard to foreground the socioeconomic tensions at the heart of its story. That clustering of projects suggests the island itself, long associated with Black vacationing history and generational wealth, is becoming a more deliberate backdrop for stories exploring class and identity, rather than simply a scenic location choice.
Berlanti Schechter Films has a notably active slate right now, including the Netflix thriller An Innocent Girl, starring Kerry Washington, James Marsden, Colman Domingo, and Chloe East, and Amazon MGM’s Red, White & Royal Wedding, the sequel reuniting Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez.
With Okoro Carroll stepping from television into feature writing and several other Martha’s Vineyard-set projects arriving around the same time, the real question is how Vineyard Haven distinguishes itself within a backdrop that’s suddenly become a hot setting across the industry.