Barry Jenkins is in talks to direct an adaptation of James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk” for Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures, the company announced Monday.
The film is based on a 1974 Baldwin novel about a young Harlem woman who is in a race against time to prove her lover’s innocence while pregnant with their first child.
Jenkins wrote the screenplay in the summer of 2013, the same time he came up with what became “Moonlight,” which took home the Best Picture trophy at this year’s Academy Awards.
Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney also won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.