Regina King attracted plenty of acclaim for her directorial debut One Night in Miami — which was nominated for three Oscars at the 91st Academy Awards — and is now set to lend her talents to a comic book adaptation for Legendary Entertainment.
Bitter Root is a 1920s set, race-themed comic book title created by David F. Walker, Sanford Greene and Chuck Brown and, in true Legendary fashion, it’s chock full of monsters. This is, after all, the studio that brought us box office hit Godzilla vs. Kong.
The project is described as “Get Out meets Blade, the Vampire Hunter” and is set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance. The plot tells the story of the Sangeryes, a family of once-great monster hunters, who face an evil that descends upon New York.
According to a statement released by Legendary, “For generations, the Sangeryes have hunted and cured those infected by a supernatural force that feeds off of prejudice and transforms humans into monsters. But with most of the family gone, the remaining Sangeryes disagree over saving or killing the monsters.”
Walker, Green and Brown, will executive produce the film adaptation, while King will also produce Bitter Root, alongside Black Panther director Ryan Coogler.
The Watchmen actress has previously garnered critical acclaim for her performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk — for which she won the 2019 Best Supporting Actress Oscar. After the success of One Night In Miami, which an adaptation of Kemp Powers’ 2013 stage play depicting a 1964 meeting of Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, King has become an in-demand filmmaker. She recently served as the unofficial host of the 91st Academy Awards.
Coogler, meanwhile, has been working on the sequel to 2018’s Black Panther, titled Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which is slated for a July 2022 release.
In an April interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, lead actress Lupita Nyong’o spoke about returning to the Black Panther set without the late Chadwick Boseman and praised Coogler for handling his absence with sensitivity.
“The way which he has reshaped the second movie is so respectful of the loss we’ve all experienced as a cast and as a world,” she said. “So it feels spiritually and emotionally correct to do this.”
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