Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai and her production banner Extracurricular is in talks with Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries to team on producing a film adaptation of the novel “Disorientation” for Apple TV+, an individual with knowledge of the project told TheWrap.
The film would be part of Yousafzai’s slate of films, TV series and documentaries she’s developing as part of a multiyear programming deal with the streamer. Yousafzai confirmed the news of the project in an interview with Variety on Tuesday, but the TheWrap has been told that the project is not officially greenlit and does not yet have a director attached, even though it was reported that McKay would be the director.
The film, which Variety reported was also titled “Disorientation,” is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Elaine Hsieh Chou. A satire about a college student writing a dissertation on a young poet, the book was released earlier this year and is the debut novel of the Taiwanese-American author.
Yousafzai is producing “Disorientation” along with “The Flight Attendant” producer Erika Kennair, who was tapped to be president of production at Extracurricular.
One of Yousafzai’s other projects which has been greenlit is an untitled documentary about the “haenyeo,” or a group of “Korea’s mermaids” who are elderly free divers whose work catching seafood off the coast of Jeju Island has supported their community for generations. Matriarchs, breadwinners and rowdy grandmas, the haenyeo’s numbers have dwindled in the past few decades. But now their youngest descendants are helping to revive the revered and often dangerous lifestyle of their ancestors, while fighting to protect the ocean from looming environmental threat.
Variety first reported the news on both projects.
