Just weeks after winning Outstanding Director at the DGA Awards for HBO's Bessie, Dee Rees is ready to leap into her next feature, and there's some hugely impressive talent attached. Rees is set to direct period piece, Mudbound, with Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton), and Garrett Hedlund in talks to star.
Mudbound is based on the 2008 novel by Hillary Jordan, which Rees will rewrite from an original draft by Virgil Williams. The story is set in 1946 and follows a Memphis schoolteacher who reluctantly moves with her husband and children to a cotton farm in a small-minded town just after WWII, and a pair of soldiers returning home from the war, one black and one white.
No word on when filming will begin or of the roles each actor will play, although it's pretty obvious Mulligan will take the lead schoolteacher role with Mitchell as one of the soldiers. [Variety]
