The Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay will direct, write, and produce for her first feature film at Netflix, an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson’s critically- acclaimed book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. DuVernay is best known for her documentary of 13th and miniseries When They See Us.
The Netflix project reunites DuVernay and Tendo Nagenda. They both collaborated on the film A Wrinkle in Time, a sci-fi adventure from Disney in 2018. The film made DuVernay the first Black woman to direct a live-action film that generated more than $100 million at the domestic box office.
The film titled Caste will use a multiple-story structure to examine the “unspoken system that has shaped America and chronicles how our lives today are defined by a hierarchy of human divisions dating back generations.” The novel was published in August 2020 and became the New York Times bestseller and was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club selection.
Sarah Bremner and Paul Garnes are also producing the project with Array Filmworks, founded by DuVernay in 2010.
DuVernay is currently producing Colin in Black & White, a Netflix limited series based on the adolescent life of athlete and activist Colin Kaepernick.
Wilkerson was also was awarded the Pulitzer in journalism for her profile of a fourth-grade boy from Chicago’s South Side and her reporting on the 1993 Midwestern flood.
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