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‘The Piano Lesson’ Director Malcolm Washington on Adapting August Wilson’s Haunting Play For a New Generation: ‘The Vision We Were Presenting Is Pretty Bold’


'The Piano Lesson' filmmaker Malcolm Washington discusses adapting August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play into an ambitious movie for Netflix.

That memory sprang to mind when he learned that “ The Piano Lesson,” his film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play and his feature directorial debut, had been selected for TIFF. Washington first encountered Wilson’s haunting 1987 play — set in 1936 Pittsburgh during the aftermath of the Great Depression, about a family at odds over an heirloom piano engraved by an enslaved ancestor — because of John David. Read on as Malcolm details his process of adapting a great American classic for film — which also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Deadwyler, Michael Potts, Ray Fisher and Corey Hawkins — and who he turned to for advice.

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