The film adaptation of the New York Times Best Seller Where the Crawdads Sing, written by Delia Owens, has cast Daisy Edgar-Jones for the lead role. Edgar-Jones is known for her roles in Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Fox’s War of the Worlds. The book, and hopefully its film adaptation, follows two timelines that closely follows the character of Kya. In the first storyline, Kya raises herself after being abandoned in the marshlands of North Carolina from the early 1950s until the late 1960s, while the second storyline follows a murder investigation following the death of Kya’s romantic interest.
According to Deadline, the film will be produced by Sony and Reese Witherspoon has signed on as one of the producers from the company Hello Sunshine. The film will be directed by Olivia Newman, serving as her sophomore effort following 2018’s First Match and a few episodes of Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire, and will be written by Lucy Alibar, the writer of Beasts of the Southern Wild and Troop Zero.
With Where the Crawdads Sing being the best-selling adult title (in print copies) during 2019 and staying on the New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 2019 and 2020 for 32 non-consecutive weeks, it seems to have an already built-in fanbase. This gives the film a leg up for its future release and bodes well for its success if it follows in the footsteps of the book and film adaptation of Gone Girl, both of which received commercial and critical acclaim. No release date has been announced for Where the Crawdads Sing.
