So, this is real.

First Look: Parker Sawyers & Tika Sumpter as Barack & Michelle in ‘Before Sunset’-Style Romance – Indiewirwe

Parker Sawyers, known for parts in “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” (2014), is playing Barack Obama to Tika Sumpter’s Michelle Obama (who was Michelle Robinson at the time the story takes place), in a film based on the early romance between Barack and Michelle.

Titled “Southside With You,” the project is being sold as a “Before Sunset”-style type of film (in short… man, woman, lots of mostly profound conversation over a specified period of time), which will take place entirely in one day, set during the summer of 1989, when one Barack Obama (then a first-year Harvard Law student) took his future wife, Michelle (an associate at a Chicago law firm), out on a first date, which included a tour of Chicago’s South Side.

The future couple also caught a screening of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” – something the president has talked about previously. I assume that moment in time will be incorporated into the script.

The film, which is currently being filmed, is directed by Richard Tanne, from his own screenplay.