Amy Adams to star in Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy for Netflix

JD Vance’s memoir played into conversations about the US presidential election and what role white working class communities played in Donald Trump’s campaign

(Getty Images)

Amy Adams will star in Netflix‘s adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard.

Variety reports that The Shape of Water‘s Vanessa Taylor will write the screenplay, based on JD Vance’s bestselling memoir, about the Appalachian culture of his family and his own upbringing in Ohio, where his mother’s parents moved when they were young.

The book reached the top of The New York Times Best Seller list after its publication in June 2016, with the book playing into conversations about the US presidential election and what role white working class communities played in Donald Trump’s campaign.

However, Hillbilly Elegy has also faced criticism, with Salon‘s Jared Yates Sexton writing that Vance ”totally discounts the role racism played in the white working class’s opposition to President Obama.”

The film has been in development since 2017, when Imagine acquired the rights, with Netflix boarding the project in January after it won a heated bidding war to finance the $45m feature.

Adams will next be seen in another adaptation of a New York Times bestseller, Woman in the Window, starring across from Julianne Moore in the Joe Wright-directed film.