‘Fitting the Romantic Vibe’: Lifetime’s Elaine Frontain Bryant Touts Launch of ‘Terry McMillan Presents’ Movie Banner (Q&A)

Lifetime will look to court Black women with the debut Saturday (August 17) of its romantic-themed film, Tempted by Love — part of the network’s new “Terry McMillan Presents” lineup of romance-themed films.

The female-skewing network’s partnership with the best-selling author McMillan, whose novels How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting To Exhale became hit films, will also debut the Taye Diggs/Meagan Good-produced film Forever on August 21, according to Lifetime executives.

Lifetime, LMN and A&E executive VP, head of programming Elaine Frontain Bryant spoke to Multichannel News about the Terry McMillan Presents banner and the network’s overall outreach to Black female viewers, who represented 32% of Lifetime’s original movie audience over the past 12 months, according to Nielsen live-plus-3-day ratings. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

MCN: What prompted Lifetime to create a movie partnership with author Terry McMillan?

Elaine Frontain Bryant: Terry just has a way of telling stories about women that we know will resonate with our audience. When you look at Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back , we thought she would be the best partner to help us get into the Black romance movie genre. We had previously made a movie from a book of hers called A Day Late and a Dollar Short, starring Whoopi Goldberg, so we thought it was an incredible opportunity to work with her. There aren’t that many writers whose biggest books turned into big movies. It’s really fitting the romantic vibe Lifetime is trying to create.

MCN: How much input does Terry McMillian have in the creation and development of the movies under the partnership?

EFB : While these are not her original stories, we definitely collaborated with her about what movies would fit the partnership. She had to sign off on all of them to make sure that it felt correct for her and with her brand.

MCN: You mentioned the Black romance movie genre. Why is that a focus for Lifetime?

EFB: We know that we have a strong, passionate, Black female audience that comes to a lot of our movies. Oftentimes, those movies are thrillers, so with this franchise we're really just trying to make sure that we expand our offerings. Also, our biopics are super strong and we had some real success with our Mary J. Blige-inspired romance-themed films a year ago. When you put a Terry McMillan on the top of that, it’s just icing on the cake. We just thought it was just a perfect time to try to do this, and we're going to give this audience more of what they want from us.

MCN: Do you have a sense as to how many movies you want to create under the “Terry McMillian Presents” banner over the next year?

EFB: We don’t have that yet. We have a few things in development and we’re hopeful, but we’re waiting to see how this goes to make more of a plan. Certainly, if this goes gangbusters, we’ll have much more rapid conversations.