Netflix has announced that a film adaptation of August Wilson‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play, The Piano Lesson, is in the works. The stellar cast of actors attached include Samuel L. Jackson (The Avengers), Ray Fisher (Zack Snyder’s Justice League), Danielle Deadwyler (Till), John David Washington (Tenet), Michael Potts (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton).
The film comes following LaTanya Richardson Jackson‘s directing of her husband Samuel L. Jackson, on Broadway, opposite Danielle Brooks and John David Washington. Denzel Washington, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance in August Wilson’s Fences opposite Viola Davis, will produce the Netflix adaptation. His son Malcolm Washington is set to direct.
About The Piano Lesson
Set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, The Piano Lesson follows the lives of the Charles family in the Doaker Charles household and an heirloom, the family piano, which is decorated with designs carved by an enslaved ancestor and polished with the tears and blood of their late mother. Other August Wilson plays adapted to film include Fences in 2016 for which Viola Davis won Best Supporting Actress and Denzel Washington was nominated for Best Actor and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 2020 for which Davis was nominated for Best Actress. Other prominent plays by Wilson include Seven Guitars and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
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