Corey Hawkins Cast As Lead In ‘The Man In My Basement” For Disney-ESPN’s Black-Led Studio Andscape

Corey Hawkins, star of In the Heights, BlacKkKlansman, and the recently released musical remake of The Color Purple, has been cast in the lead role in The Man in My Basement. In addition to starring in the film, Hawkins has signed on to executive produce The Man in My Basement. According to Deadline, the film, which is the directorial debut for Nadia Latif, is set to be released through Andscape, a black-led studio financed by ESPN and Disney on Hulu.

The Man in My Basement is an adaptation of the novel by the same name by author Walter Mosley. Poor Things, The Lighthouse, and Spider-Man star Willem Dafoe is set to act opposite Hawkins in the film. 

Set in Sag Harbor, a predominantly African American neighborhood, The Man in My Basement follows Hawkins’ character Charles Blakely who is jobless and facing the imminent foreclosure of his family home. When a businessman named Anniston Bennet, played by Dafoe, knocks on his door suggesting that Blakely rent out his basement to make a little extra money, Blakely finds himself a part of a “terrifying path that confronts his family’s ghosts” which forces Blakely and Bennet to confront the “source of their traumas and the root of all evil.”