PRECIOUS Director Lee Daniels To Adapt ANNA IN THE TROPICS
Lee Daniels (Precious) has signed on to develop and direct Anna in the Tropics, a film adaptation of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer and Steinberg Prize-winning Broadway play. John Torres Martinez and Joe Lamy of Austin-based Mankind Entertainment are set to produce this project.
The story takes place in Tampa, FL during the 1920s, which at the time was the seat of cigar-making industry and featured an imported Cuban tradition of lectors reading to workers. Inspired by Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Tropics centers on a family of cigar rollers whose lives are changed by the power of literature.
The play was a huge hit with audiences from Australia and China to Spain, Germany and France. It garnered nominations for two Tonys.
Cruz had the following to say about the project,
“I always saw it as a film. Even though I wrote is as a play, I just think it has endless possibilities as a film. The play itself is full of images and I want to open it up to the world film offers.”
Having lived in Tampa for five years I am interested to see the city on the big screen. My guess is that they will likely film this in an area of Tampa known as Ybor City. Ybor was the center of the cigar manufacturing mentioned above and has now been turned into an area of night clubs similar to Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
What are your thoughts of this news?