While Chris Columbus is best known for making the likes of the first two Harry Potter movies and the upcoming Percy Jackson & The Olympians, he’s set something rather different in motion through his 1492 Productions company.
Variety reports that he’s fast-tracking a screen version of Kathryn Stockett’s novel, The Help, about African-American domestic servants and their wealthy white employers in Mississippi before the civil rights era. While the novel has become a literary sensation, Columbus bought the rights before the book came out.
However while Columbus will produce, he’s not planning to direct the movie. That job will go to Tate Taylor, who has also written the script. In fact it all feels a bit like a love-in, as actor turned director Taylor grew up with Stockett in Mississippi, while Columbus got involved because his kids go to the same school as Taylot’s niece and nephew.
If handled well, The Help could be a fascinating look at pre-Civil Rights race relations, and the lines society draws and why people won’t cross them, even if they seem utterly wrong. Shooting is set to start in the Spring.