Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter will play the US president and the first lady in Southside With You, a film about their first date in Chicago in 1989

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Actors Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter have been cast as Barack and Michelle Obama in a forthcoming romance about the couple’s first date.

Southside With You is about the Obamas’ first outing in 1989 when Obama and lawyer Michelle Robinson visited the Art Institute of Chicago and watched a screening of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. The pair also apparently kissed outside an ice cream parlour.

At the time, Obama was a first-year Harvard Law student working as an associate at Chicago law firm Sidley Austin, where the younger Robinson was his boss. The Obamas married in 1992.

Described as a romantic comedy drama, director Richard Tanne’s film is expected to start shooting in Chicago in August, with Tanne (best known for comedy Worst Friends) working from his own screenplay. Sawyers is due to star in Oliver Stone’s Edward Snowden biopic Snowden. He also has small roles in Zero Dark Thirty and Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Sumpter played the singer Yvonne Fair in James Brown biopic Get on Up. The actor has also appeared in comedies Ride Along and My Man Is a Loser.

Deadline previously reported that Southside With You would follow the format of Richard Linklater romance Before Sunrise, which details the 24-hour encounter of a young American man and French woman as they get to know each other during a day in Vienna.