Alma Har’el Set To Direct Passion Project ‘Mockingbird’
Honey Boy director Alma Har’el is set to direct her passion project, Mockingbird, for Searchlight Pictures.
The feature will be the adaptation of Walter Tevis’ seminal 1980 science fiction novel of the same name. With Nightmare Alley producer J. Miles Dale and Robert Schwartz (Iron Will, Blizzard) are producing. Har’el will also produce with her partner Christopher Leggett. Alejandro Laguette and Rafael Marmor are executive producing.
Tevis’ Mockingbird, nominated for the prestigious Nebula Award, paints a perilous future of a declining human population, fueled by drugs and electronic bliss. A world without art, children, or books where humanity’s future hinges on a love triangle between an android, a man and a woman.
“I’ll never forget the first time I read Mockingbird on the shore of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt when I was 24 years old. This book has changed my life and I’ve been pursuing it for over a decade. I knew that Searchlight was the perfect home for it and I’m thrilled they are partnering with me to bring this to the big screen. Walter Tevis wrote a novel that refuses genre and time, choosing instead to awaken every fiber of your being,” said Alma Har’el.
“Walter Tevis was a prolific and astute storyteller who wrote novels and short stories that have withstood the test of time,” said Searchlight Presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield. “MOCKINGBIRD is a powerful tale and with the uniquely talented Alma Har’el at the helm of this film, we know it will be brilliant.”
Tevis’ also wrote the cult sci-fi The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963) which Nicholas Roeg directed in 1976 with David Bowie in the central role. The book was recently adapted into a sci-fi television series , created by Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman, the show stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Naomie Harris, Jimmi Simpson, and Kate Mulgrew. Tevis’ follow up to Mockingbird, was The Queen’s Gambit (1983), was also adapted into a mini-series with Netflix, with Anya Taylor-Joy which earned critical acclaim along with 11 Primetime Emmy Awards.
With Honey Boy starring Noah Jupe, written by and starring Shia LaBeouf, made Har’el the first woman to win the DGA Award for First-Time Feature Film. She is also the first woman in DGA Awards history to be nominated for both commercial directing (2018) and narrative directing (2020). Har’el is currently in production on “Lady in the Lake” for Apple TV+, a limited series that she created and will executive produce and direct all episodes of starring Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o.
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