(AllHipHop News) Writer/director Lee Daniels is moving forward with plans to expand his hit hip-hop drama “Empire” with a new spin-off series.
The “Precious” filmmaker co-created the music-themed series, which stars Terrence Howard as a rap mogul and Taraji P. Henson as his ex-wife-turned-record label executive.
The show was renewed for a fourth season this week, and now Lee has confirmed plans for another “Empire”-related series.
“We’re in talks,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour, where he was promoting his latest TV drama series, “Star.”
“We’re finally figuring it out. It takes a minute, you know? We just really had to build the foundation of ‘Empire’… It looks like it’s going to happen.”
Lee has yet to share any details about what the planned “Empire” spin-off will be about, but he is not opposed to the idea of using it as a prequel to explore the backstory of Taraji’s beloved character, Cookie Lyon.
“It could be (about a young Cookie),” he mused. “We really are in deep talks about it, and we’re having all these ideas thrown around to figure it out. But I can officially say that we will be having a spin-off.”
The Emmy-nominated show earned Taraji the 2016 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama, but she recently admitted she was hesitant about signing on to play Cookie, because the character was similar to others she had previously played onscreen.
“I’ve been deemed as the edgy one in Hollywood sometimes,” she told U.S. chat show The Talk. “In your career, when you’re building, you’re trying not to pigeonhole yourself and so I’ve been the girl in the hood, I’ve been the pregnant prostitute, I’ve done the woman that could be stereotypical and so Cookie scared me.”