Oprah Winfrey to Star in HBO Film of Pulitzer Prize-Winning Ruined

Oprah Winfrey will star in HBO Films’ forthcoming adaptation of Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined, according to Deadline.com. Nottage has signed on to write the screenplay for the film to be executive-produced by Winfrey and Kate Forte for Winfrey's Harpo production company. No director or additional casting has been announced.

Ruined centers on a brothel in wartorn Congo and the women who live there under the watchful eye of its madam, Mama Nadi, the role that Winfrey will presumably play. After debuting at Chicago's Goodman Theatre in late 2008, the play opened off-Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I on February 10, 2009, and ran through September 6. Ruined won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize as well as the Lucille Lortel Award, Horton Foote Prize and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play.

Winfrey received an Oscar nomination as Sofia in the film version of The Color Purple and went on to become an above-the-title producer of the Broadway musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel. The talk show queen last appeared onscreen in the 1998 drama Beloved. According to Deadline.com, she plans to appear in an untitled feature comedy with Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock written and directed by Sex and the City's Michael Patrick King for Universal Pictures.