Dee Rees To Write & Direct Film Adaptation of PORGY AND BESS

MGM has set Dee Rees is set to write and direct a feature film adaptation of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess for MGM, according to Deadline.

With music by George Gershwin and a libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin, Porgy and Bess explores the relationships among members of a close-knit community in 1920s South Carolina. The score is infused with timeless melodies that have become standards of the Great American Songbook, including "Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin," and "My Man's Gone Now."

Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway in 1935, and was turned into a 1959 film that Otto Preminger directed with Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Brock Peters, Sammy Davis Jr, Pearl Bailey, and Diahann Carroll. The most recent revival was in 2012 and it starrid Tony winner Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis.

The film will be produced by Irwin Winkler and Charles Winkler. The rights to the film were granted to MGM by the Gershwin Estate, which worked closely with Winkler and Rees to secure them.

"Porgy and Bess is at its core, a love story," Rees said. "So I'm very excited to take on the challenge of this highly venerated, iconic material and lift the architecture of this unlikely love story and re-site it at a place and moment of resistance.

Rees is an Academy Award-nominated writer and director for the film Mudbound, and her adaptation Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted will be released on Netflix February 21.

Read the original article on Deadline.