Amazon Studios has won the auction for the screen rights to Akwaeke Emezi‘s forthcoming novel, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, Deadline reports. The novel is set to be published in 2022 by the Simon & Schuster imprint, Atria.
“The book sold in a bidding battle, in the vicinity of high six against low seven figures, one of the biggest book deals of the year so far and one that was highly competitive. There were eight offers from studios, some with filmmakers attached,” Mike Fleming Jr writes.
According to LitHub, You Made A Fool of Death with Your Beauty is titled after a Florence and the Machine song. It tells the story of a “young artist struggling to overcome the loss of an old love while inviting a new one in”—the protagonist is a 29-year-old Nigerian aspiring artist in Brooklyn who loses her husband in a tragic accident and is torn between grief and moving on when she meets a handsome young man at a party and starts to move up in the art world.
“TFW you write your first romance novel in 2020 and make your first seven-figure deal for it less than a year later,” Akwaeke Emezi tweeted.
Michael B. Jordan’s production company Outlier Society will develop the movie, while Akwaeke Emezi will be the Executive producer on the project.
Emezi’s debut YA novel, PET, was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a Lambda Literary Award, and an Indie Next selection. Their debut autobiographical novel FRESHWATER (Grove Atlantic) is in early development as a TV series at FX, has been translated into twelve languages and won the 2019 Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree) and the Nommo Award.
