Percival Everett’s The Trees is headed to the small screen, Deadline reports.
Everett’s novel, published in 2021 by Graywolf Press, follows two Black detectives in Mississippi who investigate a series of murders of white men while encountering resistance from local law enforcement and various racists. The book won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.
The limited-series adaptation is being developed by Universal Studio Group’s UCP. Sterling K. Brown, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in American Fiction, based on Everett’s novel Erasure, is in talks to star, as are Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) and Winston Duke (Black Panther).
Marcus Gardley (The Chi, The Color Purple) is writing the screenplay for the series. He, Brown, and Everett are among its executive producers.
Everett’s 1985 novel, Walk Me to the Distance, was adapted into a 1990 television movie, Follow Your Heart, which the author disowned, saying, “The changes that they made were so grotesque, there was no way to embrace that at all.”
His most recent novel, James, which won the Kirkus Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award, is being developed as a film with Steven Spielberg executive producing and Taika Waititi directing.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
