Roxane Gay’s Debut Novel, An Untamed State, To Be Made Into a Movie

Roxane Gay’s 2014 debut novel, An Untamed State, gripped readers from its unlikely first sentence, “Once upon a time, in a far-off land.” The novel traces the abduction of a Haitan-American woman while she is on vacation in Port Au Prince and the harrowing thirteen days of her captivity.

Fox Searchlight has announced that they will turn An Untamed State into a movie. So many great books are made into terrible films (The Scarlett Letter, Great Expectations, and on), but luckily this feels like a project we can get behind. The film already has three great women onboard. Gay will cowrite the screenplay with director Gina Prince-Bythewood. Prince-Bythewood has directed and produced films such as Love & Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, and Beyond the Lights. The lead will be played by actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, star of Dr. Who, Concussion, and Belle. The production date hasn’t been announced, so if you haven’t read the original, you still have time.