Ernie Hudson to Headline ‘The Family Business’

Ernie Hudson, Latest News

Anita Busch | Deadline Hollywood

Ernie Hudson, who just wrapped stints on two TV series — season 4 of Netflix’s hit Grace and Frankie and Fox’s freshman prime time cop show A.P.B. — has just signed on to headline the feature film The Family Business which is based on The New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber’s novel. The film also has Armand Assante (American Gangster), Nick Turturro (The Longest Yard, NYPD Blue), Emilio Rivera (Sons of Anarchy), Miguel Nunez (Scooby-Doo), Clifton Powell (Ray) and Darrin Henson (Soul Food) aboard.

Directed by Trey Haley (The Preacher’s Son), the film began shooting today in and around Los Angeles. The screenplay was written by Weber and with ND Brown, the author and Veronica Nichols are serving as producers. Weber’s The Family Business, published in 2012, was the first of a series of novels under the same title. In fact, this first title launched eight books in what has been a popular and ongoing series about the travails of the Duncan family. The series easily sold over 2 million books.

“It’s an honor to bring this great book from Carl Weber to the screen with an incredible cast and Ernie headlining it,” ND Brown told Deadline before passing the phone over to Weber who said, “It’s like a dream come true. You work your entire life towards something and I can almost say this is a Bucket List item. It’s one of the things I wanted to do before I closed my eyes. Ernie was the person that we were envisioning, and he was the person that I had in mind the entire time I was writing this series.”

Hudson will portray ‘LC Duncan,’  the patriarch of the Duncan family who runs a thriving exotic car dealership. When he thinks about passing the leadership reigns to one of his sons, his greatest adversaries try to take over. By day, the Duncans are an upstanding family; by night, they live a dangerous secret life. L.C. Duncan, patriarch of the family, is at the age when he’s starting to think about retirement and has to decide which of his children should take over. The Duncans quickly come under siege from some of the Top Politicians, Mafia and Drug cartels in the city. The Duncan’s will have to stick together–or die separately.

Tri Destined Studios and Urban Books Media serve as the production company with One Unit (Queen Latifah’s Company). The film is expected for a fall 2018 release.

Hudson is repped by Michael McConnell of Zero Gravity Management and APA.

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