For a director as talented as Kasi Lemmons, the string of bad luck she's faced, along with the outright shunning by Hollywood, has been pretty disturbing. The Eve's Bayou director last helmed the excellent and vastly underrated Talk To Me in 2007, then struggled to land a follow-up until earlier this year when she was slated to tackle the musical Black Nativity. That project was shelved mere days before filming for dubious reasons, but it appears she may have found a suitable replacement on her schedule.
Deadline reports that Lemmons is set to direct an adaptation of Agaat, the acclaimed 2004 novel from South African author Marlene van Niekerk. The plot is described as follows:
Set in apartheid South Africa, Agaat portrays the unique relationship between Milla, a 67-year-old white woman, and her black maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat. Through flashbacks and diary entries, the reader learns about Milla's past. Life for white farmers in 1950s South Africa was full of promise — young and newly married, Milla raised a son and created her own farm out of a swathe of Cape mountainside. Forty years later her family has fallen apart, the country she knew is on the brink of huge change, and all she has left are memories and her proud, contrary, yet affectionate guardian. With haunting, lyrical prose, Marlene Van Niekerk creates a story of love and family loyalty.
Lemmons will also write the script, which should be completed by next month. The book ended up one of Oprah's many must-read lists not too long ago, so it'll likely draw a lot of attention. That's assuming it actually enters production. Lemmons was also recently set to bring Zadie Smith's novel On Beauty to the big screen, but little has been heard about it since she was announced last March.
