Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind the Making of “Love and Basketball”
How did this come together?
Gina Prince-Bythewood got her start in television writing for shows like “Felicity,” “South Central” and “A Different World.” (Obviously not in that order.) It was during “A Different World” that Prince-Bythewood would meet her husband Reggie “Rock” Bythewood (who co-wrote Spike Lee’s Get on the Bus.) He encouraged Gina to take time off from television to write her own script. Prince-Bythewood admitted that leaving television was hard because it was a market she had already mastered and the money was good. But she took a break and took two years to write the script. Once it was completed, she shopped it around. Her script was turned down by every major studio, leaving Prince-Bythewood depressed. Later, she was invited to read a script at a screenwriting program at Sundance. She choose what we now know as Love and Basketball. She and her husband improved the piece and when Prince-Bythewood read it, she was approached by New Line Cinema’s president of production, Mike DeLuca. He said it was the best love story he’d ever read and offered to finance it. The rest is history.
