Here is some very interesting news…
Madonna is set to direct a screen adaptation of the novel "Adé: A Love Story," based on real life events of its author Rebecca Walker (daughter of Alice Walker). In the novel, a female 19-year old American student – black, white, and Jewish like the author herself – who sets out to travel with her friend to Egypt, and ends in Lamu, off the coast of Kenya. There, she falls in love with a handsome Swahili muslim man named Adé, who names her Farida. Conflict arises when the couple, who plan to marry and live in Kenya, are caught in the midst of a civil war that threatens their union.
Initially announced in March of this year, the project has now found its writer in African American writer/director Dianne Houston (photo above), whose resume includes directing episodes of several TV shows, going back many years, including "Strong Medicine," "NYPD Blue," "Crossing Jordan," "City of Angels," and most recently, "Single Ladies." He writing credits include the feature film "Take the Lead," the 2006 dance drama that starred Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown, Yaya DaCosta, Alfre Woodard and others. She also helmed TV movies "Knights of the South Bronx," and "Run for the Dream: The Gail Devers Story," both in the 1990s.
The film adaptation of "Adé" will be produced by Bruce Cohen, whom you might recall shared a Best Picture Oscar for the film "American Beauty," and also produced the films "Milk" with Sean Penn, as well as the acclaimed hit "Silver Linings Playbook." Cohen will produce through his Bruce Cohen Productions company with Jessica Leventhal, his director of development, and author Rebecca Walker.
This will be Madonna’s directorial follow-up to the 2011 feature film "W.E.," about the relationship between British King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.
Here’s more about the book from the hardcover edition, courtesy of Amazon: "In a fiction debut that is as much a novel of self-discovery and identity as a lucent love story, memoirist Walker brings her background and literary strengths to bear. When the 19-year-old unnamed narrator and her Yale friend, Miriam, start their long travels, arriving in Africa becomes life-changing. In Egypt, the narrator feels she belongs for the first time, with her copper-colored skin and brown, almond-shaped eyes. Then in Lamu, an island off the coast of Kenya, she falls in love with handsome Swahili Muslim Adé, who gives her the Arabic name Farida. As Miriam resumes traveling alone, Farida and Adé live together simply and make plans to marry. But Swahili custom requires face-to-face meetings to ask for parental approval, and political realities strike previously entitled American Farida for the first time. Walker knows whereof she writes. Farida, like the author (daughter of novelist Alice Walker and lawyer Mel Levanthal), is black, white, and Jewish and a child of divorce, and Walker uses this knowledge to good effect here. A brief, sensuous love story grounded in painful reality."
Anyone read the novel yet?
If you’d like to pick up a copy, do so here.