Tracy Oliver and Issa Rae's Marriage Drama 'Open' Draws Seven Bids in Competitive Market
Tracy Oliver and Issa Rae have co-created an hourlong drama series called Open, and the project has been taken out to market — meaning shopped to buyers — drawing seven offers, according to Deadline.
The premise is built around a married couple in Houston who did everything "right" and then decide to open their marriage to save it. That choice sends shockwaves through their friend group, igniting affairs and exposing secrets. Tracy Oliver will serve as showrunner, the lead writer and executive in charge of day-to-day production. She executive produces alongside Issa Rae and Jax Clark through Rae's Hoorae banner, Brian Dobbins for Artists First, and David Becky and Jonathan Berry for 3 Arts Entertainment. Paramount Television Studios is the producing studio, with the project falling under Rae's first-look deal there — an arrangement giving the studio first right to buy what she develops. Rae signed that three-year first-look film and TV pact with Paramount in January 2026.
For Oliver, Open joins a packed development slate. She is writing and executive producing Hilary, a Bel-Air spinoff headlined by Coco Jones as Hilary Banks, in development at Peacock. Her feature pipeline includes The Wedding Date for Netflix, adapted from Jasmine Guillory's novel; Girls Trip 2; The Blackening 2; the holiday film Deck the Y'alls starring Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain; the thriller drama series Paper Gods at Netflix; and Not a Happy Family at Starz. In television, she created and executive produced First Wives Club and Harlem. She became the first Black woman to write a film that grossed more than $100 million, with 2017's Girls Trip.
Rae, meanwhile, has her own separate HBO project in the works: an untitled comedy pilot about male friendship that she is writing and executive producing, with Prentice Penny set as showrunner, executive producer and director. Rae is best known for creating, starring in and running HBO's Insecure, which ran five seasons and collected 14 Emmy nominations and a Peabody Award. She also executive produced A Black Lady Sketch Show and Rap Sh!t. As an actor, she will next appear in the film Babies, premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival.
What makes this stand out is the scale of the competition. Seven offers for a single drama project is a strong signal of buyer interest at a moment when platforms have been tightening their commissioning — ordering fewer new series than they did at the peak of the streaming boom. The fact that Open is an hourlong drama, rather than the half-hour comedy both creators are best known for, adds another layer. It positions Oliver and Rae in a format where neither has a showrunning credit before, and it gives whichever buyer lands the series a marquee project with two of the most bankable names in American television attached.
Oliver is represented by CAA, Artists First and Myman Greenspan Fox. Rae is represented by CAA, 3 Arts Entertainment and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller. Both share 3 Arts as an agency connection, and their professional history goes back at least to 2018, when Rae was cast in Universal's film Little, for which Oliver wrote an earlier draft.
No buyer has been named yet. The seven offers are on the table, and the decision of where Open lands rests with the producers and their representatives.
