There’s nothing better than seeing a director back in action, and it’s great to see Patty Jenkins getting very busy. The filmmaker spent fourteen long years between “Monster” and this summer’s blockbuster smash “Wonder Woman” without making a feature, but on the back of that DC Films hit, her phone is likely ringing off the hook, and the latest call is from TNT.
Jenkins has signed up to direct the series “One Day She’ll Darken,” which will reteam her with “Wonder Woman” co-star Chris Pine. Penned by Sam Sheridan, the six-episode series is based on the autobiography of Fauda Hodel, a woman born as the result of incest, given away, and raised white in a black community. Here’s the book synopsis:
After her father, Dr. George Hodel, a prominent Hollywood physician was acquitted in a sensational incest trial, 16-year-old Tamar gave birth to a blue-eyed, white skinned baby girl. She insisted that the father was “Negro”. Outraged by the audacity of their daughter and the stigma attached to a mixed-race child within their midst, her mother quickly arranged to have the baby permanently given away to Jimmie Lee, a black maid in a Nevada casino.
Overwhelmed by the problems of raising a white-skinned baby in her black community, Jimmie spent the next twenty years struggling to secretly raise Fauna. Together they endured extreme poverty, alcoholism, starvation, sexual abuse, pregnancy and death, hopelessly bound and knotted together by relentless bigotry.
Fauna survived this difficult world with a vow to find the one person who knew her beginnings, her biological mother, Tamar, the woman of her dreams. Fauna sets out to discover the truth, only to uncover her family’s notorious secret: her extraordinary grandfather and the murder of the Black Dahlia.
It sounds like sensational material, with Pine slated for the role of a hack reporter who was previously disgraced over his coverage of Hodel, but sees a possibility for redemption. Jenkins will direct the pilot episode, and possibly others, and I would imagine that figuring out scheduling between this and “Wonder Woman 2” might be what’s holding up her announcement as the director the tentpole sequel. [Variety]