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Zadie Smith Square
Zadie Smith Square

Pass The Popcorn: Novelist Zadie Smith To Make Her Screenwriting Debut

Lenny Kravitz, Grace Jones, Lauryn Hill, Lion Babe, Thundercat, SZA & More Rock The Afropunk Festival 2015 in Brooklyn, NY.

One of the most well-regarded novelists and essayists in modern literature, Zadie Smith will be lending her talents to the silver screen, specifically a new sci-fi film project headed by director Claire Denis set in the not-so-distant future in a solar system far, far away.

According to Screen Daily, Smith and her husband Nick Laird will co-write the film's script along with Denis. Producers Oliver Dungey,Laurence Clerc and Oliver Thery Lapiny are amongst the cadre backers that have been tied to the yet-to-be-named film. Meanwhile, the full extent of Zadie Smith's involvement is still unknown. Indiewire reports that Smith's book On Beauty was optioned for feature film development by director Kasi Lemmons in 2012, but whether or not that project is still alive remains something of a mystery. Smith's most recent novel, 2012's NW, was praised for its experimental structure and deployment of both first and third-person perspectives as it told the story of four people caught up in the urban cacophony of London. As razor-sharp as she is deeply tender, Zadie Smith and her work represent some of the most keenly-developed and respected literature today; one can only imagine what she might accomplish in the her newfound filmic work.