Lupita Nyong’o Options Film Rights For “Americanah”

Lupita Nyong`o

Lupita Nyong`o is exploring outside her acting talent.Beside her celebrated success on the screen she had set her sight on turning Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's best selling novel into a film.

 For those unfamiliar with the terminology, basically “optioning” means that Nyong’o now can start finding a studio, director, financiers, etc. for the film. 

 She doesn’t fully own the rights yet but if she gets all her ducks in a row, in the allotted time period,  she will own the film rights to the novel. After the allotted time period ends, Nyong’o will no longer have exclusive rights to buy the novel’s film rights. If Adichie chooses she can then shop the novel around to other producers.

Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie

 During an interview with Arise 360 earlier this year, Adichie hinted at the idea that Nyong’o had approached her about the project and it seems that since then, talks became concrete, according to U.K. publication Stylist magazine.

“Lupita was a very early fan of Americanah, And so before she was sort of well-known in the way that she is now, she wrote me … the loveliest email, a very long and passionate email about Americanah,” said Adichie.

For those unfamiliar with Adichie’s Americanah, the award winning fiction novel is a love story that centers around a young Nigerian couple who struggles to face difficult hardships in their hometown. In 2013, the New York Times Book Review selected Americanah as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013. Adichie also won the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.