Director and former NFL player Matthew A. Cherry’s Hair Love has been wildly popular on social media since its inception, and is now a short film. Deadline reports that Sony Pictures Animation has teamed up with Cherry on the short film adaptation, which tells the story of a young black father learning how to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.
The partnership comes two years after Cherry launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the project. Cherry who recently worked as an executive producer on Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman took to Twitter to make the official announcement.
Hey got a #HairLove announcement 🙌🏾 https://t.co/ESDqGJPTz4
— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) March 20, 2019
“In the past year, it has been very clear that audiences have been yearning to see fresh stories that are universal and culturally authentic,” said Sony Pictures Animation president Kristine Belson, according to Deadline. “Hair Love is a wonderful father-daughter story and we are proud to nurture talented young filmmakers like Matthew who are breaking new ground.”
Co-directed by Cherry and Everett Downing, Hair Love raised a record breaking $300,000 on Kickstarter back in 2017, four times over the originally planned amount. As well as hitting the big screen later this year, the thoughtful story will also see life as a book which is published by Kokila Books/Penguin Random House on 14 May.
Hair Love will be produced Karen Toliver, senior vice president of creative development for Sony Pictures Animation, Cherry, Stacey Newton, and Monica A. Young, and will have Frank Abney and Peter Ramsey as executive producers. Ramsey was one of the three directors behind Sony’s Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse .