‘Flashdance’: Justin Simien To Adapt & Direct Series Reboot For Paramount+

The Flashdance series reboot has moved a step closer to the ballroom after Justin Simien boarded the Paramount+ project.

The Dear White People creator will adapt and direct the contemporary take on the classic Paramount Pictures film.

It comes after the project first emerged in development at CBS All Access in October 2020, with Tracy McMillan set to write the script and Angela Robinson on board to direct.

Simien signed an overall deal in August with Paramount Television Studios, which is behind the adaptation, moving from Lionsgate, where he produced four seasons of Dear White People, adapted from his own feature film for Netflix. The series aired its fourth and final season in September.

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The McMillan- and Robinson-led Flashdance reboot is set to revolve around a young Black woman with ballet dreams and a strip club reality who struggles to find her place in the world while navigating romance, money, art, friendship and how to love herself.

The film was released in 1983 and starred Jennifer Beals as a young dancer aspiring to become a professional ballerina. Michael Nouri played her boyfriend and the owner of the steel mill where she worked. It was the first collaboration between Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

The project, which is still in development at the ViacomCBS streamer, is the latest Paramount feature film to be adapted for the service and comes as the platform reboots films such as Fatal Attraction, The Italian Job, Love Story and The Parallax View.

Today, Paramount+ also revealed it was also developing a new series based on Urban Cowboy.