Viola Davis will be back playing another character from the August Wilson canon after winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2017 for her role in Denzel Washington’s big-screen adaptation of Fences.
Netflix announced Wednesday that it is adapting Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom into a film that will also star Chadwick Boseman. This time around, instead of Washington directing, the production has brought on George C. Wolfe (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks). Washington is on board as a producer.
The play is the only one in Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle to take place outside the Steel City, and is instead set in 1927 at a Chicago music studio as a blues band waits for singer Ma Rainey to arrive to record a new album.
The film is being writtern by Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Lackawanna Blues), and will also feature Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman (The Red Line), and Michael Potts (Show Me a Hero) in supporting roles.
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