Red Crown Acquires Screenplay 'Queen' From Harry Tarre And Corey Rae

"Queen" will be based on Corey Rae's article “How I Became the World’s First Transgender Prom Queen". Courtesy of Elena Mitchell

EXCLUSIVE: Trans activist and model Corey Rae is getting a second crown — so to speak. Red Crown Productions has acquired the rights to Harry Tarre’s screenplay Queen which is based on Rae’s article “How I Became the World’s First Transgender Prom Queen — A Personal Essay.”

As the title of the article suggests, the screenplay is based on the true story of Rae’s real-life high school transition process and how she became the world’s first openly transgender prom queen. The film will be produced by Daniel Crown and Yoni Liebling of Red Crown Productions, and executive produced by Corey Rae and Harry Tarre, along with Amanda Crown, the Creative Executive, who brought the picture to Red Crown.

Rae first shared her story publicly on her blog in 2016 after transitioning (2009-2012). She looks to help break social stigmas surrounding transgender women. “I couldn’t be more excited to be working with Red Crown. My goal is to shed light on happy transgender experiences through film and I’m hoping this story will resonate with the LGBTQ+ community and the world beyond it,” said Rae.

“Corey Rae is an inspiration and we are honored to bring her story to the screen and continue to spread her mission and engage conversation among audiences and communities,” adds Daniel Crown, founder of Red Crown Productions. “Upon reading the script, we immediately realized the importance of this project and her journey became a priority to share with others.”

Tarre and Rae met in high school and started working on Queen three years ago. The script landed on the new GLAAD List, a curated list created by GLAAD and the Black List that includes promising unmade LGBTQ-inclusive scripts in Hollywood. Tarre is no stranger to being on such a list as he was on the Black List twice. His 2016 Black List script, Captain Infinity, is being executive produced by Robert Zemeckis’ Imagemovers. He is represented by CAA, Circle of Confusion, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman.

“The story of a young trans girl who becomes prom queen is the type of film we’d like to see coming out of Hollywood — stories about transgender people simply living their lives like everyone else,” said Jeremy Blacklow, GLAAD’s Director of Entertainment Media. This is the first GLAAD List script to be fast-tracked.

With shows including Pose and Transparent, actresses Jamie Clayton, Laverne Cox and filmmakers Silas Howard and Rhys Ernst, the script comes at a time when visibility of the trans community is on a much-needed rise.

Queen adds to Red Crown’s slate which includes the film Honey Boy from Shia LaBeouf, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by Amazon Studios. The studio also executive produced Anthony Mandler’s Sundance drama All Rise based on the award-winning novel by Walter Dean Myers and starring Kelvin Harrison Jr, Jennifer Hudson, and A$AP Rocky. The film was recently acquired by Entertainment Studios. Red Crown was also behind Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name is Doris, and Jason Bateman’s The Family Fang.