A Best Supporting Actress Oscar can be a bit of a mixed blessing – if you look through the list of winners there are a surprising amount whose blossoming career pretty much stalled the moment they won – but Lupita Nyong’o doesn’t look like she’ll be amongst them.
Earlier this week she signed on to appear in Star Wars: Episode VII, and now THR reports that Lupita Nyong’o is developing Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Americanah as a starring vehicle for herself. She will also produce, and she’s getting some help from 12 Years A Slave’s Brad Pitt on that score too (at the moment there’s no suggestion he will also star.
Americanah is a love story about young Nigerians Ifemelu and Obinze; ‘a romance that spans continents, visas, phone cards and breakups, while exploring the cruelties and the humor of both the modern immigrant experience and the difficulty of finding your way home. The novel was the winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, the BBC and Newsday.’
Nyong’o commented, “It is such an honor to have the opportunity to bring Ms. Adichie’s brilliant book to the screen. Page after page I was struck by Ifemelu and Obinze’s stories, whose experiences as African immigrants are so specific and also so imminently relatable. It is a thrilling challenge to tell a truly international story so full of love, humor and heart.”
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