Netflix has picked up Ron Howard’s adaptation of the J.D. Vance memoir Hillbilly Elegy, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.
Howard is to direct the adaptation of Vance’s book by The Shape of Water co-writer Vanessa Taylor. The best-selling memoir has been cited to partially explain the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Vance, a former Marine and Yale Law grad, uses his childhood in Rust Belt Ohio and Appalachia to depict the plight of the white working class.
News of the film deal, unveiled at Sundance, includes Netflix financing Howard’s big-screen adaptation.
Howard will also produce the project along with Brian Grazer through their Imagine Entertainment shingle. He directed 1995’s Apollo 13 and won an Oscar for helming 2002’s A Beautiful Mind.
Howard is repped by CAA.
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