Talk about never too late. But t is not Love Jones 2, but Nia Long and Larenz Tate are officially reuniting in a new romantic drama for Netflix, marking their first onscreen pairing in decades. The project is directed by Sylvie’s Love filmmaker Eugene Ashe and takes creative inspiration from Maxwell’s classic debut album Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite. While Netflix has yet to reveal the film’s title or storyline, the buzz is already building around the duo’s return.
The script is penned by Kay Oyegun, the acclaimed writer and producer behind This Is Us. Long and Tate are not only starring in the film but also serving as executive producers alongside Maxwell and John D. Hammond.
Fans have long hoped for a continuation of the magic created by Long and Tate in the 1997 cult classic Love Jones, a film that became a cultural touchstone for Black romance in cinema. But both stars have been careful about revisiting that world. In a 2023 interview, Tate admitted he is frequently asked about a sequel but expressed hesitation about trying to recreate something so timeless. “It would be hard for us to catch lightning in the bottle twice,” he said, though he confirmed that he and Long have discussed new ways to collaborate.
“We feel like we should do something, but something different,” Tate explained. “We’ve talked about movies, TV shows, and ideas that could be their own franchise because we know what Love Jones meant. We know what those characters meant, and we do not want to do anything that doesn’t live up to what people expect.”
While this new Netflix project is not officially connected to Love Jones, the reunion of Nia Long and Larenz Tate already has fans nostalgic for that same energy, grown, elevated, and ready for a new era of love on screen.