Power Couple: Mara Brock & Salim Akil

When it comes to Hollywood power couples, Salim and Mara Brock Akil have consistently found success on both the small and big screen. Only a few days into the New Year and that trend looks to be continuing in 2012. On January 10, the Akils will launch another season of the hugely successful The Game on BET Networks. Later in the year, they’ll help bring Whitney Houston back to the silver screen with the release Sparkle (Sony Pictures), which features singer Jordin Sparks making her acting debut.

Teaming up to form their umbrella company Akil Productions came as a result of many years on the Hollywood grind. “Before we formed our company, [Salim and I] would have [studio] meetings and I realized that executives would think they could get both of us for the price of one,” says Mara, 41. “We are very proud to let people know that we have our own individual strengths that compliment each other but if you want both of us, you have to pay two for the price of two.”

In 2010, the Akils inked a deal to produce original shows like resurrected series The Game with the Viacom-owned Black Entertainment Television. Soon after the family ventured into feature film with the box office success of the TriStar 2011 release of Jumping the Broom. The film was made with a $6 million budget and has grossed over $38 million to date. Now, they have their eyes set on their next potential blockbuster. “When the studio [Sony Pictures] approached me about remaking Sparkle, my first reaction was that Black people would kill me if I [messed] this up,” remembers Salim, 47. “Only if I could do it with my wife would it work.”

Actors Pooch Hall & Tia Mowry-Hardrict in character on set of The Game

Balancing a fledging production company, a marriage and raising two sons is something that comes second nature to the couple, whose work continuously takes them away from home in California. “I consider it a huge blessing to work with my husband,” adds Mara, while in LA in The Game’s writer’s room. “Our biggest assets are our resources. Because we both have been doing this work for many years, we are and have been able to collaborate with wonderful talent that shared our passion.”

Their mission as a team of storytellers is to bring Black stories to life sometimes with less time and fewer dollars. “It’s nothing for us to balance commerce with art. We’ve always worked under financial constraints,” says Salim. “Me and Mara know how to make a dollar out of 15 cents. We have to keep giving the audience quality work and conversations that are relevant.”

The Akils have been passionate about telling Black stories from both of their humble beginnings. Mara got her professional start as a production assistant on The Sinbad Show before being hired as a writer’s assistant on South Central. Writing scripts for The Jamie Foxx Show and Moesha led Mara to create UPN’s Girlfriends, which was her first time collaborating with her husband, who got his start as a writer working on Showtime’s Soul Food. “Our conversations with studio execs are different now. We have a proven brand. It’s no longer us saying we have this idea; it’s now them asking us, what would we like to do—it’s nice,” says Salim. “We have a marriage, we have a family and the same personal and professional struggles but everyday I feel privileged to be here. We clearly love what we do.”

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Mara Brock Akil

Against the backdrop of The CW Television Network’s plans to abandon the half-hour comedy genre at the end of this season, television producer Mara Brock Akil and the cast of the show she created, The Game, are engaged in a bold gambit: to convince the network to expand the show to a one-hour time slot. The show, developed by Brock Akil and husband Salim Akil’s company Akil Row Productions (formerly Happy Camper Productions), revolves around Melanie Barnett (played by Tia Mowry), who leaves medical school to follow her boyfriend as he pursues a pro football career. If Akil, listed among the Black Enterprise Top 50 Hollywood Power Brokers, is successful, it will be the latest milestone in a career of barrier-breaking achievements in the television industry.

The “Change The Game” campaign includes an appeal, including a YouTube video featuring Mowry, Pooch Hall, Wendy Raquel Robinson and other cast members, to fans of the show to register 1 million posts to The CW Lounge message boards by April 15, the day the cast says Brock Akil herself is slated to make her pitch for the one-hour format to The CW. A secondary message of the YouTube campaign is to end “rumors” of the impending cancellation of The Game, after the announced cancellation of Everybody Hates Chris, which it followed in The CW’s 8:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. time slot on Friday nights.

“As of today [April 10], The Game is not canceled,” Brock Akil says. “However, due to The CW phasing out of the half-hour sitcom business, it is highly unlikely the show can return in its current form. Dawn [Ostroff, president of entertainment at The CW] and I are meeting so she can hear what The Game could look like in the hour format and give it strong consideration as she plans her schedule for next fall. And it certainly feels good knowing the fans are trying to do their part by getting a million hits on The CW web site before I go in to meet, so that I not only go in with a new idea, but I go in with a lot of fan support.”

If the show keeps its half-hour time slot, it begs the question of how the other half-hour would be filled by The CW. However, the fact that The Game deftly blends comedy with serious dramatic themes and does not have a studio audience favors Brock Akil’s proposed expansion to an hour-long format.

 

Mara Brock Akil

“The Game is ripe for an hour format because the show has already evolved into a single-camera style, the subject matter often takes a dramatic turn due to our desire to remain authentic to the subculture of professional sports, and the serial nature of the relationship arcs have turned the show into somewhat of a nighttime soap opera, leaving our dedicated audience starving for more and, in some instances, dissatisfied with the nineteen minutes of air time they are currently getting each week,” Brock Akil explains. “The hour format would also allow us more time to juggle the compelling story lines of our current cast members, while making way for new characters in the world of football, which we all know is larger than life and full of drama.”

With the cancellations of other CW shows with urban themes, including Girlfriends, One on One, All of Us, and now Everybody Hates Chris, The Game would be the last show on network television with a predominantly black cast. (Tyler Perry’s House of Payne is on cable’s TBS.) In its first two seasons, The Game averaged more than 2 million viewers each week. This season, after being moved to its current Friday-night “death” slot, average weekly viewers fell to 1.68 million. Between seasons two and three, The Game’s ratings in the 18-49 demographic fell from .96 to .07. The CW moving Chris and The Game to Friday nights, when everybody is getting ready to go the club—I mean (ahem), Friday night worship service—probably didn’t help the ratings of either show, to say the least.

To say that Brock Akil’s bid is a bold one is an understatement. Network television has a decades-long track record of limiting black shows to half-hour sitcoms—if it has any programming with black casts or urban themes at all. And with few exceptions, even these shows have been treated shabbily—pimped as a quick way to build viewership (African Americans watch more television than most other groups), shifted to the most difficult time slots, and then unceremoniously dumped as networks fill out their line-ups with “mainstream” programming featuring black and minority actors as secondary characters at best. Past attempts at breaking the 30-minute sitcom time barrier for black shows with anything approaching authentically written, high-quality, hour-long dramas featuring black actors in principal roles and culturally diverse themes have been few and short-lived.

Keep an eye on Brock Akil. Come mid-May, when The CW is slated to announce its new fall lineup at upfronts in New York, she could literally change the game. I, for one, hope she succeeds.

To go to The CW Lounge message boards click here.

Alfred A. Edmond Jr. is the editor-in-chief of BlackEnterprise.com