adaptations

Ava DuVernay to Adapt Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents 

Ava DuVernay reunites with Netflix for her next feature. Photo: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic

Just two months after being published, being named an Oprah’s Book Club selection, and landing on the New York Times Best Sellers List, Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents will be adapted by Ava DuVernay for Netflix. DuVernay will direct, write, and produce the film, her first feature for the streamer. She had previously teamed with Netflix for The 13th, her Oscar-nominated documentary on the prison-industrial complex, and most recently earned 16 Emmy nominations for the limited series When They See Us, which chronicled the case of the now–Exonerated Five, Black men who were falsely convicted of rape by a racist and unjust system as teens. Across multiple real-life stories, Caste examines how the country has been defined by human divisions throughout its history. Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson came to the idea while researching her 2010 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, an instant best seller about the migration of African Americans from the South in the 20th century. DuVernay is currently working on Colin in Black & White, a Netflix miniseries about the life of another history-maker, Colin Kaepernick.

Ava DuVernay to Adapt Isabel Wilkerson’s Best Seller Caste