Dreamworks is in talks with the late John Steinbeck’s literary estate to make a new movie on his depression era classic ‘The Grapes of Wrath‘ with Steven Spielberg interested in producing the new version.
Steinbeck’s classic novel was already adapted into a 1940 drama film by 4-time Oscar-winning director John Ford.
The Grapes of Wrath follows the Joads, a poor farming family, driven from their Oklahoma home to California beaten down by poverty and hunger in the Great Depression.
Henry Fonda’s strong performance as Tom Joad earned him an Academy Award nomination for best actor in a leading role.
Dreamworks is hoping that they can capitalize on the fact that Steinbeck’s novel will be turning 75 years old in 2014.
Spielberg, who is already committed to directing Bradley Cooper in American Sniper will only be taking a productorial part in the project.
Check out the trailer for the original movie below.
Here’s the book description:
A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.
