Tika Sumpter will play a younger, hotter Ken Cockrel Jr. on screen

Per a report from Deadline Hollywood, “The Haves and the Have-Nots” actress Tika Sumpter will be starring in and co-producing a CBS drama series set here in Detroit.

Called “The 313,” Sumpter’s drama should sound familiar to anyone who’s lived in the city for any amount of time. Here’s a quick descriptor:

In The 313 (which is Detroit’s area code), when a sex scandal brings down the current administration, a 29-year-old female City Council President (Sumpter) suddenly becomes the Mayor of Detroit and has to contend with all the staggering obstacles the job brings.

It kiiiinda sounds like that one time when former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick stepped down and was temporarily replaced by City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr., in 2008. When Cockrel took office, he was faced with re-balancing the city’s budget in the wake of the ongoing Kilpatrick scandal, among other challenges.

Cockrel only lasted one season – er, year – in office, so let’s hope Sumpter’s show doesn’t suffer the same fate as, say, “Detroit 1-8-7” or “Low Winter Sun.”

This wouldn’t be Sumpter’s first go-round with a Detroit-set plot. The “Southside With You” actress briefly took up residence here while filming a remake of the 1970s Blaxploitation classic “Sparkle” alongside Whitney Houston and Jordin Sparks.

On the difference between acting in front of the camera and producing behind the scenes, Sumpter spoke to BLAC about the balance at length when promoting “Southside”: “Producing is kind of like putting a puzzle together and there are pieces everywhere. It’s a collaborative effort and everybody has to be willing to work together and agree that the piece is worthwhile. So it’s getting all those pieces together and then also getting the money, and then even if you get the money, it still has to be green-lit. It’s a process, but for me I like putting stuff together anyway — that’s my thing. At times, you have to be aggressive and take off the actor hat. I had to balance sometimes because I deal with these people on an actor level as well. But I love it. It’s like a nice piece of the pie to have, control-wise and creativity-wise.”

No word on when the series will debut, but “The 313” is the latest in a recent spate of Detroit-centric productions, including a still-in-development TV series based on Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy, the soon-to-debut Comedy Central series “Detroiters” and a Katheryn Bigelow-helmed film about the 1967 riots.