Variety has reported details on the cast for Mudbound, the latest effort from acclaimed director Dee Rees (Bessie), with Carey Mulligan (Far From The Madding Crowd), Jason Clarke (Terminator Genisys), Garrett Hedlund (Pan) and Jason Mitchell (Straight Outta Compton) all in talks to star.
Scripted by 24 and E.R. writer Virgil Williams, the film is based on the acclaimed book by Hillary Jordan, which tells the story of “around a city worker in a WWII-torn country who relocates his family to a failing Mississippi farm and is forced to overcome insurmountable hardships, including his brother’s return from war.”
Director Rees won praise for her last film, Bessie, the television adaptation of the life of Bessie Smith, the legendary blues performer from the 1930’s. Star Queen Latifah won a SAG award for her performance, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. Rees won a Primetime Emmy for her directing on the film.
The synopsis for the book reads:
“It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband’s Mississippi Delta farm―a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family’s struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura’s brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not―charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South.”
No release date has been set just yet for Mudbound.
