Roxane Gay’s “An Untamed State” heads to the big screen

This is incredible news: Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay announced yesterday that her book, An Untamed State, is being made into a film by Fox Searchlight.

An Untamed State is an absolutely stunning novel about a young Haitian-American woman named Mireille who is kidnapped and held for ransom while visiting her family in Haiti. Her father, who is from one of the richest families in Haiti, refuses to pay her ransom due to the belief that he’ll be condoning the actions of the criminals. The darkly violent book follows Mireille’s escape from her captors and her life back in America after such an ordeal.

Roxane will cowrite the script with the director Gina Prince-Bythewood, Deadline Hollywood reported. The actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw from Concussion, Beyond the Lights and Belle, will star.

Roxane tweeted about how Fox Searchlight came to embrace the story (and a cute guy she met at a studio during one of her meetings, natch):

We couldn’t be more happy for Roxane Gay about this exciting news! Congratulations and we can’t wait to see the film.