Precious Director Lee Daniels to Bring Anna in the Tropics to the Big Screen

Lee Daniels, the Academy Award-nominated director of Precious, has signed on to direct a film adaptation of Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Anna in the Tropics, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Daniels has also been linked to a screen adaptation of the long-running musical Miss Saigon and is rumored to be interested in making a film version of Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys. His past producing credits include The Woodsman and Monster's Ball.

Cruz seems thrilled to have Daniels attached, and the two will meet in January to begin work adapting the play. “I loved [Daniels’] use of fantasy and quotidian life in Precious," says Cruz. "It was a wonderful combination. I think my piece also deals with similar level of reality.” Casting for the film has yet to be announced.

Anna in the Tropics is set in 1929 in a Cuban-American cigar factory where cigars are still rolled by hand and "lectors" are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is a cause for celebration, but when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics, and the American dream prove a volatile combination. The play bowed on Broadway in 2003, starring Jimmy Smits, Priscilla Lopez and Daphne Rubin-Vega, and earned two Tony Award nominations, including Best Play.