In 2020, the rights to the New York Times best-selling novel, “The Water Dancer” were sold to MGM, Plan B, Maceo-Lyn, and Harpo Films with the intention of making a big-screen adaptation. Now we’ve learned that Nia DaCosta, known for the indie “Little Woods” and the “Candyman” remake, has been named the director for the project.
The 2019 pre-Civil War novel, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, follows a young black man named Hiram who discovers that he has a mysterious power of teleportation and is recruited as an agent of the Underground to help slaves escape.
READ MORE: Criterion’s July Releases Include ‘Raging Bull,’ ‘Okja,’ ‘Drive My Car,’ & More
Here’s the longform synopsis for the book:
Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen.
Last year, when we reviewed DaCosta’s “Candyman,” we described it as a story “of Black pain, its legacy, and the cyclical nature of segregation and violence. How traumatic stories are told and who is allowed to communicate that pain.” The themes of Black pain that we saw in “Candyman” will also be explored in this new project but in an entirely different way.
While DaCosta has experience in the crime drama and horror/thriller genres, “The Water Dancer” is a mixture of history and fantasy. The book lives in the genres of historical fiction, magical realism, and science fiction and sews melancholy with suspense while merging the historical slavery narrative with quest fantasy.
Oprah Winfrey‘s Harpo Films feels like a natural fit as one of the production companies bringing this story to the silver screen. “The Water Dancer” was the first Oprah’s Book Club selection for her partnership with Apple. DaCosta is currently wrapping on “The Marvels,” the sequel to “Captain Marvel” starring Brie Larson, which will be released this fall.