Dee Rees Photo Courtesy of Deadline
Dee Rees will write and direct the feature film adaptation of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for MGM Studios.
The original musical, which found its way to Broadway in 1935, is a tale set in Charleston, SC. There in Catfish Row, a disabled beggar named Porgy tries to rescue Bess from her violent lover, Crown. The Gershwin Estate recently granted MGM the film rights, and Irwin Winkler (Goodfellas, Rocky) and Charles Winkler (Rocky Balboa, Creed) signed on to produce.
In an interview with Deadline, Rees said, “Porgy and Bess is, at its core, a love story. So I’m very excited to take on the challenge of this highly venerated, iconic material and lift the architecture of the unlikely love story and re-site it at a place and moment of resistance.”
Read more at Deadline.