There aren’t that many female directors, even fewer black female directors, and fewer still black female lesbian directors, so Dee Rees is a little bit special, especially considering the success she’s had with movies like Pariah and the biopic Bessie. Now though she’s planning something a little different, a horror movie about black lesbians in rural America.
She’s got some heavyweight backing too, as Jason Blum, the producer behind Paranormal Activity, The Visit, Insidious, The Normal Heart, and the recent successes, Split and Get Out, will produce the movie. The news was revealed in a New York Times piece about Blum, who met Rees in March at a Sundance Institute event and shortly after she pitched him a movie, which she relayed to him as, “You’ve got me and my wife, two black lesbians, and when we first moved in, we fought every day over all these little things: ‘Why is this over there? Did you move that?’ Maybe it was a ghost. Or maybe it was some other force – like us not wanting to be there or fitting in. Anyway, that’s my horror movie pitch.”
Blum liked the idea, and so Rees is busy working on a script, “A horror movie centred on the domestic lives of black lesbians in rural America.” She adds, “I can’t tell you how rare it is that people mean what they say in this business. He’s just letting me make the best possible version of what I want to make.”
It’s still a long way until the movie gets made, but with Blum on board she’s certainly got a good shot. She’s also preparing for the release of her latest film, Mudbound, which was a huge success at Sundance and was snapped up by Netflix. It’s about a black family and a white family living in rural Mississippi shortly after the end of the Second World War. Carey Mulligan, Mary J Blige, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke and Jason Mitchell star.
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