Amy Adams is set to star in Ron Howard’s adaptation of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” set up at Netflix.
Written by J.D. Vance, “Hillbilly Elegy” is a modern exploration of the American dream and three generations of an Appalachian family as told by its youngest member, a Yale Law student forced to return to his hometown.
The book chronicles Vance’s life growing up poor in the Rust Belt among the working class “hillbillies” and charts his family’s struggle as they navigate through drug addiction and social and economic challenges. Supported by his larger-than-life grandmother, Vance developed an appreciation for education that laid the foundation for him to rise out of poverty and its cultural restraints.
“Hillbilly Elegy” topped the New York Times best-seller list upon its release in August 2016 and then again in January 2017.
Netflix won a bidding war for the right to finance “Hillbilly Elegy,” which Imagine Entertainment optioned back in April 2017.
Vanessa Taylor (“The Shape of Water”) will adapt the screenplay based on Vance’s memoir, with Howard directing.
Howard, Brian Grazer and Karen Lunder will produce for Imagine Entertainment. Julie Oh and Vance will executive produce.
Adams is coming off of another Oscar-worthy performance as Lynne Cheney in Adam McKay’s “Vice.” She earned her sixth Academy Award nomination for the performance. Adams will next appear in the mystery crime flick “The Woman in the Window,” about an agoraphobic woman living alone in New York who begins spying on her new neighbors only to witness a disturbing act of violence.
Adams is represented by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.