Showtime to adapt Philly writer Mat Johnson's semi-autobiographical novel

In what Deadline refers to as a "competitive situation," Showtime is adapting Loving Day, the semi-autobiographical novel from Philadelphia writer Mat Johnson as a comedy about race.

The critically-acclaimed Loving Day is about a biracial man who returns to Philadelphia from Wales when his life falls apart. He's inherited his father's dilapidated, and potentially haunted, Philadelphia mansion, and learns that he has a teenage daughter who believes she is white. The title refers to the Supreme Court decision that struck down all bans to interracial marriage.

Johnson, who attended the Greene Street Friends School and West Chester University, lived in Germantown and Mt. Airy dealing with his own racial identity. "I grew up a black boy who looked like a white one. My parents divorced when I was 4, and I was raised mostly by my black mom, in a black neighborhood of Philadelphia, during the Black Power movement," he wrote in an essay for the New York Times called "Proving My Blackness."

Johnson, who is currently a professor in the University of Houston's creative writing progam, will serve as executive producer. In addition to Loving Day, Johnson has written three previous novels, a book of nonfiction, as well as comic books, among other works.