Malcolm D. Lee has taken his talents to the literary space, expanding the beloved The Best Man franchise into a new, spicy novel.

The Best Man is quite literally the gift that keeps on giving for Lee, who, back in 1999, made his directorial debut with the film, which would go on to become a cult classic. Now that he has three films and a limited series under his belt for the franchise, the New York native, with Jayne Allen, has officially debuted his first original novel, The Best Man: Unfinished Business.

“I’ve been fantasizing about writing a novel, and I thought, okay, here was an opportunity with characters that I already knew, with a story that had already been previously discussed and displayed, to be more expansive in the storytelling. And the fans said that they wanted some more from these characters,” Lee told Blavity in a recent interview.

The difference between writing a screenplay and a novel

“It’s very difficult to mount a television show or a movie with all these great actors who are very busy, and so I said, well, let me tell the story that I know I can tell, but in this novel form,” he continued. “Here’s an opportunity to do that, and I gotta say, it was very rewarding to do so.”

He noted that writing the screenplay and forming a life for the characters in the pages of a book had a lot of similarities, especially when it came to the process and his permission to dig deeper into the storytelling.

“You get to do things on an intimate level, you know,” Lee said. “And you get to use all five senses when you’re reading a book, it’s a very immersive world that you can get into in a way that — yes, movies and television are great, and I love them, and I’m never going to give up that medium — but to be able to really get into these characters’ heads in a different way gets you to know them much more intimately.”

What story will this installment of ‘The Best Man’ franchise explore?

Co-written with Allen, author of the bestselling Black Girls Must Die Exhausted novel series, Unfinished Business “follows Harper, Jordan, and Robyn as they try to establish new lives away from the hurts of the past and come to realize that some relationships are impossible to break away from,” according to the synopsis.

On dedicating the novel to his late mother

In a heartwarming note at the beginning of the book, Lee penned a tribute to his late mother, Nancy, whom he said would have devoured the book immediately, thanks to her love of reading and writing.

“My mother is always with me,” Lee said. “She’s in my heart. She’s in my soul. I don’t think it was a conscious effort to take inspiration from here, because there’s some things that are pretty racy in there that I, you know she would have enjoyed, but she wouldn’t want to discuss it with me, probably. But, you know, I think, and I didn’t really consciously think about it until it was the dedication time to be like, of course it’s to my mother, because she really has a ton of books still in the house that I grew up in, and she was an avid reader.”

He added, “It’s a great tribute to her. And she loved The Best Man, she loved my storytelling, and really never got a chance to see The Best Man: Final Chapters. But I think she would have loved them and would have loved this iteration of it.”

The Best Man: Unfinished Business is currently available to purchase in bookstores nationwide.