'Moonlight' Director Barry Jenkins To Adapt James Baldwin Novel

Here at LAist, we're big fans of Moonlight. So we were ecstatic to hear that Barry Jenkins, director of the Best Picture winner, has lined up his next project—Variety reports that Jenkins will adapt iconic writer James Baldwin's novel If Beale Street Could Talk.

This has been a long-standing project for Jenkins; he wrote the script back in 2013, around the same time he wrote Moonlight, and has been working with the Baldwin estate since then to perfect the adaptation. Of the adaptation, Jenkins said, "James Baldwin is a man of and ahead of his time; his interrogations of the American consciousness have remained relevant to this day,” according to Variety.

The 1974 novel tells the story of a young engaged couple named Fonny and Tish in 1970s Harlem. Fonny gets falsely accused of rape and Tish, who is pregnant with their child, fights to prove his innocence. James Baldwin was also recently adapted for the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based off his unfinished manuscript Remember This House.

Production is slated to begin in October.