Ta-Nehisi Coates has adapted his 2019 historical-fantasy novel, The Water Dancer, for an upcoming film produced by Oprah Winfrey’s and Brad Pitt’s production companies, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Harpo Productions and Plan B Entertainment are producing the movie, as is Kamilah Forbes, the executive producer of the Apollo Theater. Forbes directed the upcoming HBO special Between the World and Me, based on a stage adaptation of Coates’ 2015 memoir, which won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award. That special, which premieres on Nov. 21, features Winfrey, who selected The Water Dancer for Oprah’s Book Club last year. (Watch for Kirkus’ column on the program later this month.)
The Water Dancer is initially set in Virginia before the Civil War. White people are called “the Quality” and Black people are known as “the Tasked.” One of the Tasked, Hiram Walker, becomes a conductor on the Underground Railroad; he has the ability to use a power called “conduction,” which involves a blue light that can carry him and others from one place to another. He makes his way to Philadelphia, but he’s determined to free loved ones he left in the South, and he eventually finds that he’s not the only person who has his unusual gift.
Kirkus’ review noted that “Coates’ imaginative spin on the Underground Railroad’s history is as audacious as Colson Whitehead’s [in 2016’s The Underground Railroad], if less intensely realized.” Whitehead’s novel also features distinct fantasy elements, and it, too, is receiving a high-profile adaptation, as an Amazon Prime Video miniseries directed by Moonlight’s Barry Jenkins. No release date has been set for either production.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
