Since his 2016 Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Writing for an Adapted Screenplay, Jenkins has been working on another novel adaption, this time of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel If Beale Street Could Talk.
Adapting the novel for film around the same time he was writing Moonlight in 2013, he’s finally revealed a sneak preview into his latest project. Tweeting out a teaser trailer on what would’ve been the writer Baldwin’s 94th birthday, we see Race‘s Stephan James and newcomer Kiki Layne as the central couple in a poignant tale of the former’s false conviction.
Set in 70s New York, the director explained that he and his cinematographer James Laxton wished to create as authentic a New York as possible. Recording atmospheric sounds from the city, from saxophone buskers to traffic soundscapes, it seeks to be as ambient as possible. Moonlight co-wrier Tarell Alvin McCraney apparently described the cut as depicting “New York. It’s not a New York of places. It’s a New York of faces.”
Watch the first teaser trailer below now, and stay tuned for the US release on 30th November 2018 at Toronto International Film Festival, and the UK release on 18th January2019.
