So what happens when your sophomore feature film gets nominated for six Academy Awards and walks away with two statues? If you’re Lee Daniels, you give yourself a lot of options before choosing your next post-Oscar project. With “Selma,” “The Butler,” “The Scottsboro Boys” and an ill-advised remake of Frederico Fellini‘s “Nights Of Cabiria” all kicking around on the helmer’s slate, he’s gone ahead and added yet another potential project.
Lee Daniels will develop and direct a feature film adaptation of the Pulitzer- and Steinberg Prize-winning play “Anna In The Tropics” by Nilo Cruz. Inspired by Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” the story takes place in the cigar industry in 1920s Tampa and “centers on a family of cigar rollers whose lives are changed by the power of literature.”
Cruz will meet with Daniels in January to begin work on the project and he seems positively stoked about it saying, “I loved his use of fantasy and quotidian life in Precious. It was a wonderful combination. I think my piece also deals with similar level of reality.” We’re sure that the term “reality” is being used quite flexibly here.
Of course, there’s no word yet on if this will be Daniels next official project and it seems more likely he’ll get it moving and see if it ends up in a place that he likes before directing.