Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt are teaming up to produce a film adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ best-selling novel “The Water Dancer” for MGM, Variety has confirmed.
Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Pitt’s Plan B will produce alongside Kamilah Forbes, who is the executive producer of the Apollo Theater. Forbes recently directed the theatrical adaptation of Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” as well as the upcoming HBO adaptation. Plan B and Harpo Films collaborated on the Oscar-nominated film “Selma” in 2014. Coates has adapted the novel for the screen.
“The Water Dancer” follows Hiram Walker, who was born enslaved and lost his mother at a young age. After almost drowning from crashing a carriage into a river, Hiram discovers that he has a mysterious power related to long-lost memories of his mother, and struggles to understand it.