By Lynn Elber, Television Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Oprah Winfrey and the director of the Oscar-nominated movie "Selma" are creating a drama series for Winfrey's TV channel.
The project from Winfrey and filmmaker Ava DuVernay is inspired by the Natalie Baszile novel "Queen Sugar," the OWN channel said Monday.
Winfrey will serve as executive producer and will play a recurring role, the network said. DuVernay will write, direct and executive produce the drama, her first TV series.
Former talk show queen Winfrey increased her presence on OWN's non-scripted programs (including "Oprah Presents: Master Class") to help steady the channel after its rocky start. The new drama will mark her acting debut on OWN after several big-screen projects and network TV movies.
Winfrey's recent movies include "Lee Daniels' The Butler" and DuVernay's film about the 1965 voting rights campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Selma," which earned DuVernay a best-director nod at last month's Golden Globe awards, is nominated for best picture and best song at the Feb. 22 Academy Awards.
Production on Winfrey and DuVernay's drama series is scheduled to begin later this year, OWN said. The contemporary series will follow a woman who leaves her affluent Los Angeles life to move with her teenage daughter to an inherited sugar came farm in the South.
In a statement, DuVernay said she was "captivated by the idea of a modern woman wrestling with identity, family, culture and the echoes of history."
Winfrey, who boosted many an author's fortunes with her talk show's book club, said she loved Baszile's book and "immediately saw it as a series for OWN."
A debut date for the series was not announced.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More