After her successful directorial debut with One Night In Miami, Regina King is heading back to the director’s chair. She is collaborating with David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers) to adapt Tom Wolfe‘s bestselling novel A Man In Full for Netflix.
Set in Atlanta, the story follows different characters as they try to capitalise on a real estate mogul’s bankruptcy and subsequent downfall. The streaming giant has ordered six hour-long episodes with King set to direct the first three. Kelley will be the showrunner and writer of the series, while also serving as an executive producer.
“A passion project for me, no doubt,” Kelley said in a statement. “The opportunity to tackle Tom Wolfe’s brilliant and prescient novel, to have Regina helming — I could not be more excited.”
While King only made her cinematic directing debut with One Night In Miami, she’s a veteran in the TV world, having helmed episodes of Scandal, Shameless, and This Is Us, while also winning an Emmy last year for her acting work in Watchmen.
Greenlighting A Man In Full continues Netflix’s interest in adapting the works of some of the best American writers of the 20th century. They also have multiple adaptations of Don DeLillo novels in development.
They’ll be hoping that this Wolfe adaptation fares better than some of the previous attempts; Brian De Palma‘s The Bonfire Of The Vanities was a disaster, while the Disney+ series adaptation of The Right Stuff was cancelled after one season. Anything close to the acclaimed 1983 film of the same name – which itself was initially a box office bomb – will be well appreciated by Netflix.
In front of the camera, King can be seen in new western The Harder They Fall, which just premiered and is also a Netflix project. There’s no word yet on what her feature film directorial follow-up to One Night In Miami will be.
#Peace.Love.AManInFull
