Gugu Mbatha-Raw to Star, Gina Prince-Bythewood to Direct Film Adaptation of Roxane Gay’s ‘An Untamed State.’

Gina Prince-Bythewood, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Roxane Gay

Author Roxane Gay just shared some major news with her social media followers. Her 2014 debut novel, An Untamed State is set to be adapted to film. The project will be helmed by filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. This forthcoming movie marks the second collaboration between Prince-Bythewood and Mbatha-Raw, who also worked together in the hit film Beyond The Lights.

According to Deadline, An Untamed State “tells the powerful, unflinching story of a Haitian-American woman kidnapped for ransom in front of her husband and child.”

A brief synopsis reads,

Mireille Duval Jameson is living a fairy tale. The strong-willed youngest daughter of one of Haiti’s richest sons, she has an adoring husband, a precocious infant son, by all appearances a perfect life. The fairy tale ends one day when Mireille is kidnapped in broad daylight by a gang of heavily armed men, in front of her father’s Port au Prince estate. Held captive by a man who calls himself The Commander, Mireille waits for her father to pay her ransom. As it becomes clear her father intends to resist the kidnappers, Mireille must endure the torments of a man who resents everything she represents.

An Untamed State is a novel of privilege in the face of crushing poverty, and of the lawless anger that corrupt governments produce. It is the story of a willful woman attempting to find her way back to the person she once was, and of how redemption is found in the most unexpected of places. An Untamed State establishes Roxane Gay as a writer of prodigious, arresting talent.

Gay, who is also known for her 2014 work Bad Feminist, will co-write the script with Gina Prince-Bythewood.