Precious director to develop big-screen adaptation Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play

THR reports that Precious director Lee Daniels has signed on to develop and direct a film adaptation of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer and Steinberg Prize-winning Broadway play Anna in the Tropics, which is being produced by John Torres Martinez and Joe Lamy of Austin-based Mankind Entertainment.

Anna in the Tropics is set in 1920s Tampa, which at the time was the Capital of America’s cigar-making industry and featured an imported Cuban tradition of lectors reading to workers. Inspired by Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, the play centers on a family of cigar rollers whose lives are changed by the power of literature.

According to the report, the play was nominated for two Tony Awards and was translated and performed for audiences in Australia, China, Spain, Germany and France.