Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer is being developed as a film at MGM from Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Brad Pitt’s Plan B.

Kamilah Forbes, the director of the HBO special Between the World of Me, based on Coates’ book, will produce. Coates adapted his book for the big screen.

Here’s the official description of the book:

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.

“Ta-Nehisi’s debut fiction novel has at its heart, a beautiful character in Hiram Walker, whose personal odyssey weaves the supernatural and spiritual, with the terrible reality of the forced separations endured by enslaved people and their families for centuries,” said MGM’s film group chairman Michael De Luca and MGM’s film group president Pamela Abdy in a statement. “Hiram’s story is one of devotion to those he loves, and the journey he takes to bring them together. All of us at MGM are incredibly honored to join Ta-Nehisi, Kamilah, Plan B and Harpo Films in bringing this film to the screen.”

“I’m honored to be working with Harpo, Plan B and my old friend Kamilah Forbes,” added Coates. We all believe that MGM is the best home for this adaptation and look forward to bringing it to life.”

The Hollywood Reporter first broke this news.

Photo: Getty Images

The Water Dancer

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