IM Global and producers Robert Teitel, Tika Sumpter and Richard Tanne announced that they have cast Parker Sawyers as the young Barack Obama in Southside with You. The romantic dramedy was inspired by Barack and Michelle Obama's first date. Parker Sawyers joins Tika Sumpter who will play Michelle.

The film covers the eventful date in 1989 when a young associate named Barack Obama was trying to woo lawyer Michelle Robinson on a summer afternoon and evening, that took them from the Art Institute of Chicago to a screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing to the site of their first kiss outside of an ice cream parlor.

Parker Sawyers, an American actor based in the UK, recently completed Oliver Stone's Snowden with Joseph Gordon Levitt and is about to shoot a supporting role in the feature The Autopsy of Jane Doe, opposite Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch. Other credits include the upcoming Universal action drama Spectral as well as James McTeigue's thriller Survivor opposite Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson; the dark thriller Don't Hang Up opposite Sienna Guillory and the sci-Fi thriller Monsters: Dark Continent. He also had supporting roles in Zero Dark Thirty and Hyde Park on the Hudson.

Richard Tanne makes his directorial debut with the project based on his screenplay, which will be produced by Bob Teitel, with IM Global's Founder and CEO Stuart Ford, President of Production Matt Jackson, SVP of Production Glendon Palmer and Tracy Bing on board as executive producers.  The film was cast by Tracy "Twinkie" Byrd (Fruitvale Station, When the Bough Breaks, Jumping The Broom).