As he and star Will Smith (Suicide Squad) are currently at work searching for a new filming location for the drama Emancipation, director Antoine Fuqua is keeping his dance card full as he has signed on to direct and produce a film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, according to Variety.
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“Bringing such a historic production to the screen is an honor I am thrilled to have alongside Stephen and Alia,” Fuqua said in a statement. “They have shown their commitment to the project with two successful stagings on Broadway and the West End and know what it takes to translate this iconic drama from theatre to cinema.”
First premiering in 1955 and based on his short story “Three Players of a Summer Game,” Tennessee Williams’ iconic play is set in the Mississippi Delta on the plantation of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, and explores the relationships among his family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the “Cat,” Brick’s wife, and themes of greed, family, death and sexual repression.
The Broadway play got a 2008 revival that made history as the first all-African American production, sold out for 19 weeks straight and was the highest-grossing play that season. Producers Stephen C. Byrd and Alia Jones-Harvey will be partnering with Fuqua to develop their vision of the play as well as “new storylines and weave them together to bring the production to the big screen.”
“We set out to produce groundbreaking, high caliber work on both Broadway and London’s West End with iconic plays, and now we hope to replicate this with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as a film,” Byrd and Jones-Harvey said in a statement. ”We are thrilled to be able to bring this Tennessee Williams classic play to life once again in a new iteration with the acclaimed Antoine Fuqua at the helm.”
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Fuqua is set to produce the film via his Fuqua Films production label alongside Byrd and Jones-Harvey through their Front Row Productions banner.
(Photo Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for HBO)
