QUEEN SUGAR, First Full-length Trailer
In addition to the news that Oprah Winfrey will star in Ava DuVernay’s movie for Disney, A Wrinkle in Time, the first full-length trailer for another of their collaborations, Queen Sugar was recently released.
The series is based on the novel Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (Penguin/Pamela Dorman; Thorndike; 2014; see our chat with the author just prior to the book’s publication). As we wrote earlier, the story takes place in Southern Louisiana and features three sibling who inherit their father’s sugar cane plantation. It was selected as a book of the week by Oprah’s O magazine, saying, “In Queen Sugar, two bulwarks of American literature—Southern fiction and the transformational journey—are given a fresh take by talented first-time novelist Natalie Baszile.”
The TV show will start with a two-night premiere on Sept. 6 and 7. Entertainment Weekly reports that each of the 13 episodes will be directed by a different female director “as part of DuVernay’s efforts to bring up other female voices as she gains additional notoriety. Should the show perform well, she will try to recruit another group of women to direct a second season.”
Oprah herself will have a recurring role. In the press release announcing the production, she said, “I loved this book and immediately saw it as a series for OWN. The story’s themes of reinventing your life, parenting alone, family connections and conflicts, and building new relationships are what I believe will connect our viewers to this show.”