Fine artist Rashid Johnson’s first film, Native Son, has been snapped up by HBO Films ahead of its Sundance Film Festival premiere. An adaptation of Richard Wright’s influential novel, the film was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. It was produced by A24. According to the synopsis, provided by Sundance, the film seems to adapt Wright’s 1940 novel to the present day. Or at least post-1977: ““Bigger ‘Big’ Thomas, a young African American man, lives with his mother and siblings in Chicago. Half-heartedly involved with a girlfriend, he sports green hair and a punk jacket, smokes weed, and carries a pistol — but rebuffs his buddy’s ‘easy-money’ scheme to knock off a corner store.†Big’s life is up-ended; first by socialite Mary Dalton, then by his involvement in an accidental death. Native Son will hit HBO later this year.