Honey Boy filmmaker Alma Har’el has found her next feature project, an adaptation of Walter Tevis’ seminal science fiction novel, Mockingbird. 

The novel, which was first published in 1980 and nominated for the prestigious literary Nebula Award, paints a post-apocalyptic future in which the human population is in dramatic decline – those who survive spend their days in narcotic bliss or choose a quick suicide over slow extinction. Setting in which art, children, and books are a thing of the past, humanity’s future hinges on a love triangle between a suicidal android, a man, and a woman.

Walter Tevis is also known for having penned The Man Who Fell to Earth, which has recently been adapted to series starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Naomie Harris; the show premieres later this week, April 24th.

The Searchlight Pictures film will be produced by Oscar-winner J. Miles Dale (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water) and Robert Schwartz (Iron Will), alongside Har’el and her partner Christopher Leggett. Alejandro Laguette and Rafael Marmor are also on board to exec produce.

“I’ll never forget the first time I read Mockingbird on the shore of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt when I was 24 years old,” said Har’el. “This book has changed my life and I’ve been pursuing it for over a decade. I knew that Searchlight was the perfect home for it and I’m thrilled they are partnering with me to bring this to the big screen.  Walter Tevis wrote a novel that refuses genre and time, choosing instead to awaken every fibre of your being.”

Har’el is additionally in production on Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake, itself based on the mystery novel by Laura Lippman, and which stars Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyong’o. Har’el created the series, serves as executive producer and directs all the episodes.