The Return of "Native Son" (On Screen)

Another screen version of Richard Wright's 1940 best seller, Native Son, is scheduled for release, per Entertainment Weekly ( Fall Movie Preview, Special Double Issue, August 17/24, 2018). It stars newcomer KiKi Layne, who presumably plays Bigger Thomas's girlfriend Bessie and Ashton Sanders (Moonlight), who presumably plays Bigger. No other information about the production was provided.

Previous versions came out in 1986 and 1950. The latter version starred Richard Wright himself as Bigger Thomas. (Clips from that film appeared in a public television documentary about Wright.)

Of the 1986 version, Leonard Maltin's 2006 Movie Guide called it "an OK melodrama" and criticized its "deliberate alterations and softening of some of the novel's key plot points and themes." (Oprah Winfrey appears as Bigger's mother.)

The new film will probably be more graphic in its depiction of Bigger's accidental killing of Mary Dalton, the daughter of his white employer and the subsequent disposal of her body in the basement furnace.