“Baldwin: A Love Story” becomes a film: the Obamas’ company joins Anonymous Content, Marlon James co-writes the screenplay

The life of James Baldwin, one of the most important voices of 20th-century American literature, will come to the big screen — as Deadline reports, Anonymous Content and Higher Ground, the company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, will jointly produce a feature film based on Nicholas Boggs’s biography “Baldwin: A Love Story”. The news was given on Thursday, Oct 1, at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles by Anonymous Content’s new chief executive, Darren Walker.

The screenplay will be written by the biography’s author himself together with his partner, the novelist Marlon James, winner of the Man Booker Prize for “A Brief History of Seven Killings” — according to US media reports, the two will also be executive producers of the project. The film will focus on the intimate and artistic relationships that shaped Baldwin’s life and work, a different angle from earlier adaptations based on his writings, such as Barry Jenkins’s drama “If Beale Street Could Talk” (2018) or Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” (2016).

Boggs’s book, described as the first major biography of Baldwin in 30 years, draws on newly discovered archival material and new interviews, and follows four key figures in the writer’s life: the painter Beauford Delaney, his mentor; the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger, his love and muse; the Turkish actor Engin Cezzar, his collaborator; and the French artist Yoran Cazac, whom Deadline describes as Baldwin’s last great love — the first book to fully examine his place in the writer’s life.

The project also has the family’s blessing: representatives of the James Baldwin estate, Trevor Baldwin and Karim Karefa, entrusted the story of “Uncle Jimmy” to the Anonymous Content and Higher Ground teams, promising access to the family archives for a historical portrayal that, as they say, uplifts and humanises his existence. Confirmed producers are Walker and David Levine for Anonymous Content, Anikah McLaren for Higher Ground and Howard Gertler, Higher Ground’s collaborator on the Oscar-nominated documentary “Crip Camp”.

The director, cast, budget and start date for filming have not yet been announced — the film is still in the development stage. But the involvement of the biography’s own author in writing the screenplay, and of one of the most acclaimed contemporary novelists, makes “Baldwin: A Love Story” one of the most ambitious literary adaptations announced this year.