Veteran filmmaker to produce new adaptation.
Deadline’s Mike Fleming is hearing that DreamWorks has begun talks with the estate of John Steinbeck with plans to develop a new adaptation of the author’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ‘The Grapes Of Wrath.’
Published in 1939, the book focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Spurred by the promise of high wages for farm workers, they travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.
The book was previously adapted in 1940 by legendary filmmaker John Ford with Henry Fonda in the role of the defiant and tragic protagonist Tom Joad.
Steven Spielberg is on board to produce the new adaptation but is not expected to direct. The veteran filmmaker is gearing up to shoot his next directorial project, ‘American Sniper’ starring Bradley Cooper.
You can check out a trailer for Ford’s classic below: