Oprah Winfrey signs on to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks adaptation

TV mogul Oprah Winfrey is getting dramatic again after landing a lead role in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
The star has been developing the TV movie for six years after teaming with Six Feet Under and True Blood creator Alan Ball to produce the project. The film, for America’s HBO network, will be based on Rebecca Skloot’s book and will centre on the true story of Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cancerous cells were used in medical research to create the first immortal human cell line.
The film will be told from the viewpoint of Lacks’ daughter, Deborah, who sets out on a journey to learn about the mother she never knew and how the unauthorised harvesting of her cells in 1951 helped change medical industry.
“She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells – taken without her knowledge in 1951 – became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more,” a description on the book’s official website reads. “Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance.”
Broadway director/producer George C. Wolfe has written the script and will direct the film, which will begin shooting in the summer (16).
It is unclear when the movie will be released and who will star alongside Oprah. The 62-year-old is slated to next appear in Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? and has also signed on to the Queen Sugar TV series.
She has also been seen onscreen recently in films like Selma and Lee Daniels’ The Butler.