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TikTok videos spotlighting Chicago and its histories expanding to a new platform. Shermann Dilla Thomas shared on Twitter that the streaming service “like my idea, they LOVE the treatment and episode layout I wrote. Now they want a pilot. So I gotta write the best 60 pages of my life,” he announced. “Never wrote a pilot before but I’m from Chicago, so there really isn’t anything I can’t do.”
Block Club Chicago confirmed in a new report on Tuesday (January 11) that Thomas is working with Netflix to bring a historical fiction series to life. Fellow Illinoisan Chris Witaske would produce the series. “If I’m getting ready to make a TikTok about someone or something, I’ll be like, ‘This would be a cool series.’ This series was one of the things I wanted to make a TikTok about but didn’t because I felt like one or two minutes wasn’t enough time to lay it out like I wanted to,” he told Block Club Chicago. He added later: “I feel determined, and I feel responsible to help change the Chicago narrative, or at least provide some perspective. We have the issues we have today because of what historically happened. So, if you can better explain what historically happened, maybe you can fix what’s happening today.”
Follow Thomas on TikTok here.